Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal, but which the reader recognizes as his own.
Poetry Quotes
To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
There are so many tender and holy emotions, flying about in out inward world, which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many rich and lovely flowers spring up which bear no seed, that it is a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbus all those incorporeal spirits, […]
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive […]
Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. Let not what should be sauce, rather than food for you, engross all your application. Beware of a boundless and sickly appetite for the reading of poems which the nation now swarms withal; and let not the Circaen […]
“Look into thy heart and write!” is good advice, but not if interpreted to mean, “Look nowhere else!” The poet should know his world and, so far as his art is concerned, any kind of battering from his world is better than his own self-indulgent brooding.
I care not one single curse for all the criticism that ever was canted or decanted, or recanted. Neither does the world. The world takes a poet as it finds him, and seats him above or below the salt. The world is as obstinate as a million mules, and will not turn its head on […]
When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have else they will never have better.
