Quotes about Poetry

Poetry spills from the cracks of a broken heart, but flows from one which is loved.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

Wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence comes the instinctive activities that enable all living beings to obtain their food, to find shelter, to bring forth their young: to sing and dance and fly through the air and swim through the depths of the sea. This is the same inner tendency that evokes the insight of the poet, the skill of the artist and the power of the shaman.

A POEM IS A SPIDER WEB

A poem is a spider web

Spun with words of wonder,

Woven lace held in place

By whispers made of thunder.

What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common?

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry.  Words are words.  The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance.  They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that.  It's all the same.  Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics.  They are interchangeable to me.

I like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection.

Be aroused by poetry; structure yourself with propriety, refine yourself with music.

Money is a kind of poetry.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it was the feeling they had of the inner-structure of Nature that the soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on the power of intellect; it is man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.

Farewell, but you will be
with me, you will go within
a drop of blood circulating in my veins
or outside, a kiss that burns my face
or a belt of fire at my waist.
My sweet, accept
the great love that came out of my life
and that in you found no territory
like the explorer lost
in the isles of bread and honey.
I found you after
the storm,
the rain washed the air
and in the water
your sweet feet gleamed like fishes.
Adored one, I am off to my fighting...

'Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?'
'I read it in a book,' said Alice.  'But I had some poetry repeated to me, much easier than that, by - Tweedledee, I think it was.'
'As to poetry, you know,' said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of his great hands, 'I can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes to that - '
'Oh, it needn't come to that!' Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him from beginning.

I can explain all the poems that were ever invented - and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.

There is a kind of poetry in simple fact.

If your everyday life seems poor, do not blame it; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.

Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy.
Easy?
Of course — you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands.
I never met him.
Who?
Everybody.
Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting?
I am.
Pardon me?
I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational.
Not all painting.
No: housepainting is representational.
And what does a housepainter represent?
Ten dollars an hour.
In other words, you don't want to be serious —
It takes two to be serious.

The silence between two heartbeats embraces the whole universe.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnnoticed & that necessary.

You kiss the back of my neck

I'm spinning to the ground

You run your strong fingers down my back

I can't hear a sound

You whisper things to me

So sweet I can taste your words

You're so close to me

I can feel our souls touching

You draw circles in my palm

Your love warms me to my toes, this I will never forget.

You loved me even if it was only for a minute

I hold onto that minute every night

You needed me even if only for a moment

I still hold onto that moment inside.

One thinks of a Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, or Dickenson, not as engineers hard-pressed to reverse-engineer existence, but rather deeply contemplative and sensual individuals who wanted nothing more than to savor and celebrate the intricate flavors of, and their curiosity toward, existence.

"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric;
out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry."

~William Butler Yeats~

They sway'd about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.

For what I have publish'd, I can only hope to be pardon'd; but for what I have burned, I deserve to be prais'd.

Poetry is the story of your life set to verse.

" I thought i was , but i'm not  , what i was , or what i thought."

Enough
 These few words are enough, if not these words,this breath...
If not this breath, this sitting
 This opening to the life we have refused
again and again until now. Until now.
In this moment of epiphany
This opening to the life we have refused
again and again
until NOW

~david whyte

Enough
 These few words are enough, if not these words,this breath...
If not this breath, this sitting
 This opening to the life we have refused
again and again until now. Until now.
In this moment of epiphany
This opening to the life we have refused
again and again
until NOW

~david whyte

Only when a man's interior warriors are strong enough can he go into the joy of display.

With this strength he can also enter into the delight of form. Shapeless clothing, verse that is sloppy, chaotic furnishings: all are linked in secret ways to shame. The universe is not ashamed, and it delights in form. The sun rising over the ocean and setting in the ocean, the moon's lonely shinings and hidings, the leaves unfolding and falling are its displays.

Poetry is a form of display. The poet bird repeats vowels and consonants in order to widen his tail. Meter and counted syllables make up a peacock tail. The poem is a dance done for some being in the other world.

If, as Nalungiaq says, "in the very earliest time... people and animals... spoke the same language," then the rectification of language requires closeness with our animal nature. Then the vitality of our language resides as much in the sound of our words and beat of their rhythms as in their meanings. That's why Lorca puts the poetry of duende together with song, dance, and bull-fighting, and that's why poems belong more to speaking than to reading, more to passionate declamation and ecstatic jubilation, keening, crying, and screaming, and to the secret whispers of lovers' lips than to typed lines on bleached paper. Good language asks to be spoken aloud, mind to mind and heart to heart, by embodied voices that still retain the animal and by tongues that still delight in savoring vowels and the clipped splitting of explosive consonants.