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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.

Random quote on Poetry

Most quoted on poetry:

Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

Theodore Roethke

Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the Poets Militant below!

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

On the e-book Poets Against the War.

Stephen Fry

Today a kind of speaking in tongues is taking place. In sacred frenzy poets speak the language of all times, all cultures. Nothing is impossible.

Osip Mandelstam

in this particularly hard moment, divided moment, poetry can really help us reclaim our humanity.

Ada Limón Interview with NPR (2022)

For most of my life, I had relegated poetry to this sort of moribund, romantic ghetto.

Alex Jovanovich

Lyric poetry bares the soul and needs great purity and modesty or it risks becoming comical. (1925)

Teresa de la Parra

One of my favorite poets is Lucille Clifton, author of a good number of fine books, including Blessing the Boats, Quilting, and Two-Headed Woman.

Sheree Thomas Interview with Apex Magazine (2017)

Pound's crazy. All poets are.... They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin. For history's sake we shouldn't keep him there.

Ernest Hemingway

I don't understand poetry. We studied it in high school and college, but they never told us why it was good.

Tom Lehrer Insider Audio interview (1997)

Poetry must be read to be poetry. It may be that one reader is all that I deserve. If this is so, I want that reader to be you.

William Saroyan My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

All poetry is experimental poetry.

Wallace Stevens Opus Posthumous (1957)

Classical poetry is the poetry of revolution

Osip Mandelstam

I was just reading some poetry, and it talked about how things start as one thing and change into another, and I just thought, what a great concept for a song.

Tommy Lee

"I keep thinking about blood. I dream about it. Wake up thinking about it. Pretty soon I'll be writing morbid emo poetry about it."

Cassandra Clare City of Ashes (2008)

Poetry has been to me something more than amusement, it has been a cheering companion when I had no other to fly to, a delightful solace.

Henry Kirke White

The Futurists were the first painters, poets, and architects who exalted modern work with their art—

Fortunato Depero

Poetry is a form of necessary speech.

Edward Hirsch How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)

For half a century, poetry was the paradise of the solemn fool—until I came along and set up my roller coaster.

Nicanor Parra

I hope my work will prompt someone to consider or study more about Chinese poetry.

Marilyn Chin Interview with Asian Review of Books (2020)

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