Poetry Quotes

Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.

If music and sweet poetry agree. As they must needs (the sister and the brother), Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.

One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.

Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down...

I know what his poetry will be about. What poetry is always about. The cruelty of the poet's mistress.

For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

Poetry can be written only because it has been written.