The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found—the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it. — Allen Ginsberg Share this quote Post on X Facebook Download image Copy quote Copy link Share… Another quote → Topics PoetrySociety
Who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall. HOWL (1955)
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
The war is language,language abusedfor Advertisement,language usedlike magic for power on the planet.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'. George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)
I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds. Michael Faraday