Poetry quotes
Welcome to our collection of Poetry quotes! Poetry has been a source of inspiration, solace, and self-expression for centuries. In this category, you will find a wide range of quotes from renowned poets, thinkers, and writers who have beautifully articulated the power and beauty of poetry.
Explore the words of famous poets such as William Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson. Whether you are a fan of classic poetry or contemporary verse, you will find a diverse selection of quotes that capture the essence of this art form.
These quotes delve into various themes, from love and longing to nature and spirituality. Experience the raw emotions and vivid imagery conveyed through the written word. Discover how poets use rhythm, metaphor, and language to evoke deep feelings and provoke thoughts.
Whether you are a seasoned poetry enthusiast or someone new to this expressive form of literature, we hope these quotes inspire you to appreciate the richness and power of words. So, immerse yourself in the enchanting world of poetry through the profound, soul-stirring, and thought-provoking quotes in this category.
John Bellamy Foster
— ProfessorFrances Bellamy thought the changes spoiled the poetry of it. He was a pretty stern guy. Everybody has some sense of humor, but I don't think he had much.
Joyce Carol Oates
— Author[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterThe fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.
Sarah Vowell
— AuthorIf I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco.
Antonio Machado
— PoetThe great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsA poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
D.T. Suzuki
— Pioneer of Zen Buddhism in the WestThe greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorWhen poets - write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful preparation of meals, the serving of meals, meals communally shared: a sense of the sacred in the profane.
Antonio Machado
— PoetIn order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsA poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorIf food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterA . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsA poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorWhen you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterPoetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsAll poets who, when reading from their own works,m experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorHow does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterNo one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsA poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorProse-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterTruly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsA poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorProse-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterThe gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterThe central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterBest thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterIn vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterPoetry springs from something deeper; it's beyond intelligence.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterI think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterThe aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterI don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose.