Quotes about Poetry

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rater than seen.

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams - their visions, really - we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape.

In our human lives, we are often impatient, ill-tempered, inappropriate. We find it difficult to treat our intimates with the love we really hold for them. Despite this, they bear with us because of the larger, higher level of family that they honor even in our outbursts. This is their commitment.

As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all. When we deal with one another, we are dealing not merely with our own human personalities but also with the unseen but ever-present throng of ideas, visions, stories, poems, songs, sculptures, art-as-facts that crowd the temple of consciousness waiting their turn to be born.

It is not the poet's business to save man's soul but to make it worth saving . . . However, few poets have written with a clear theory of art for art's sake, it is by that theory alone that their work has been, or can be, judged; -and rightly so if we remember that art embraces all life and all humanity, and sees in the temporary and fleeting doctrines of conservative or revolutionary only the human grandeur or passion that inspires them.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.

The poet discovers himself alone on a darkened stage, suffering temporary amnesia. What terror not to be able to remember or to imagine what you wanted to say. A language dysfunction, a disease of imagination's present time. The expectant audience sits unmoving and utterly silent. A small asexual voice offstage prompts the first words of a monologue in whispers, and the poet begins to speak, a time-delayed recitation of the future. A light at the back of his head comes on and moves to direct his footsteps as the ghostly unembodied voice continues to prompt him. When it stops, he asks himself: 'What was I saying, what was it I wanted to say? This is a play I am making up and someone is directing me from the wings. I want to scratch at the back of my head where the light is coming from, but it only gutters when I swing my hand and remains out of reach. There is a silence you choose and a silence that descends on you when the prompter decides to make you nervous, and that is terrifying. I cannot memorize what I will think to say when it tells me. It is so unnewtonian it takes your breath away."

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.