Poetry Quotes

Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life.
John Betjeman

Life, View, Modern

For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men.
Giorgos Seferis

Men, Heart, Small

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.
Robert Penn Warren

Enough, Write, Annoying

My father had wanted to name me for Dylan Thomas. He had seen him speak on one of those drunken poetry tours he did.
Dylan Walsh

Father, Him, Wanted

I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, they're kindred spirits.
J. Carter Brown

Music, Found, Arts

I think it was T.S. Eliot who talked about good poetry being felt before it's understood. I believe that. There are some bands where I love their lyrics but I don't have a clue what they're on about.
Marcus Mumford

Love, Good, Before

I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican.
Stevie Smith

Liked, Anglican

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.
Stevie Smith

Strong, Important, Another

Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.
James Martineau

Music, Religion, Prayer

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.
Anthony Hecht

Good, Memory, Library

What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
Czeslaw Milosz

Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living.
Vanessa Redgrave

Living, Alive, Stay

I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.
Peter Porter

Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.
John Denham

Another, Spirit, Language

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.
Bernie Taupin

Real, Insult, Call

You don't go after poetry, you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a lot of the work.
Phyllis Gotlieb

Work, Through, After

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery, when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.
Sonja Sohn

Work, Moving, Career

As I got older, I really got into Tupac's poetry, his books and just learning about his life and what he was into.
Jhene Aiko

Life, Learning, Older

Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.
Rick Fox

Another, Read, Takes

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Stephen Spender

Great, Somebody, Written

The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.
Basil Bunting

Try, Confusion, Moment

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.
John Ashbery

Time, Off, Head

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.
Fernand Leger

Music, Art, Beautiful

Poetry must be made by all and not by one.
Comte de Lautreamont

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.
Tracy K. Smith

Life, Thinking, Might

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