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Poetry is the culture of a people. We are poets even when we don’t write poems; just look at our life, our rhythms, our tenderness, our signifying, our sermons and our songs.

— Nikki Giovanni

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Poetry

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.

The Authority of a Writer (2024)

I'm a big fan of the black woman and so I'm always looking at aspects of the black woman--what she's doing and how she does it.

The Authority of a Writer (2024)

History is wonderful. We have so much we can learn if we would quit making ideology out of history, and just deal with what happened…

Nikki Giovanni: Interview (2008)

If I were advising someone on a writing career, the deal is this: write. If you get it published, good. If somebody pays you, better, because you have to eat, but the deal is you have to write.

The Authority of a Writer (2024)

Politics is personal. That, however, doesn’t mean it’s ideological. It means that one cares about what she or he is doing, what he or she is writing…

Nikki Giovanni: Interview (2008)

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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

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Nikki Giovanni (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.