Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Poetry Quotes
Alexander Pope leads, followed by Florence Earle Coates, Muriel Rukeyser and Horace. Samuel Johnson’s definition in Lives of the English Poets (1779), poetry as the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason, is the best-sourced entry, and Thoreau’s couplet from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is the saddest: his life was the poem he would have written, but he could not both live it and utter it.
Flagged: “All poetry is misrepresentation,” credited to Jeremy Bentham and disputed; a triplet on three poets from three distant ages, credited to Dryden and disputed; and “The crown of literature is poetry,” credited to Somerset Maugham and marked misattributed.
Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best: 'memorable speech'.
I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
A poem works or fails to work; no amount of argufying can convert an experienced reader.
Prose—words in their best order;—poetry—the best words in their best order.
I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.