I think that we're beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, "Ahhh." That was the first poem. — Lucille Clifton Share this quote Post on X Facebook Download image Copy quote Copy link Share… Another quote → Topics Poetry
Other than “the unanswerable question”… It’s the heart speaking, maybe that, maybe the human heart speaking.
One thing poetry teaches us, if anything, is that everything is connected…There is so much history that we have not validated.
… I am a grown-up, sensual woman, even at this age and size. People would think you wouldn't be. I'm open to the whole of human experience.
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