Poem Quotes

No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?
John Barton

Why, Expect, Results

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.
Wallace Stevens

Nature, Often, Meaning

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.
James Buchan

Poetry, Purpose, Importance

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.
David Duchovny

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.
Pablo Neruda

Peace, Making, Goes

Every single soul is a poem.
Michael Franti

No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.
Marguerite Duras

Music, Power, Woman

A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.
Douglas Dunn

Understand, Expect, Audience

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
Diane Ackerman

Lie, Together, Language

I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.
Patti Smith

Writing, Artist, Felt

At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.
Joni Mitchell

Writing, Trying, Guitar

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.
John Updike

Young, Off, Goes

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.
Maurice Sendak

Nothing, Writing, Why

If you can say the lyrics almost like a poem and they stand up, that's a great thing. Some songs have great lyrics and I don't like the melodies, and vice versa.
Harry Connick, Jr.

Great, Stand, Almost

Critics? How do they happen? I know how it happened to me. I would send a poem or story to a magazine and they would say this doesn't suit our needs precisely but on the other hand you sound interesting. Would you be interested in doing a review?
Leslie Fiedler

Happen, Story, Hand

Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.
Jonathan Safran Foer

Work, History, Book

Manipulating shadows and tonality is like writing music or a poem.
Conrad Hall

Music, Writing, Shadows

The moment of change is the only poem.
Adrienne Rich

To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.
Octavio Paz

Eyes, Read, Hear

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.
Robert Morgan

Poetry, Free, Problems

Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.
Wallace Stevens

Nature, God, Whether

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Howard Nemerov

Sometimes, Talk, Making

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.
Howard Nemerov

Work, Beautiful, Thought

Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.
Howard Nemerov

Thought, Close, Telling

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.
Howard Nemerov

Fake, Real, Said

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
Howard Nemerov

Poetry, Political, Happen

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.
M. H. Abrams

Through, Means, Read

For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
Rita Dove

Thought, Heard, Whisper

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.
Rita Dove

Through, Two, High

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.
Rita Dove

Keep, Color, Pick

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

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