Poetry Quotes

The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest stand of all is the slang of poets.

There was never a poet who had not the heart in the right place.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you like music to the musician… or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better.

There are two classes of poets – the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.

The importance and endurance of poetry, as well as art, are its hold upon reality. We hear much, on this side and that, of realism. Well, we may let realism go, but cannot let go reality.

The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions. Dante’s is one of those that one can only just hope to grow up to at the end of life.