A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
Poetry Quotes
Rime, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad. The verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull. Usually (and wickedly) spelled “rhyme.”
Most wretched men are cradled to poetry by wrong: they learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Take the commonplace, clean and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job.
The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
For me, poetry is an impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.
The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don’t go to a war, and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy.
Why need every honest poet be suspected of leading a quadruple life? Sometimes the second or third meaning is less interesting than the first, and the only really difficult thing about a poem is the critic’s explanation of it.
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
That’s going to be hard to live down for a “community” that considers itself to be avant garde – how does one lead from the rear? But today’s poets no longer have a choice: spiritually hamstrung by a combination of priggish decadence and primitive tribalism, they remain frozen in place while the world rushes by. […]
