Poetry Quotes - page 69

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. (Leonard Cohen)
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use. View quote
Leonard Cohen
I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet. View quote
Leonard Cohen
When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love. View quote
Umberto Eco
Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings. View quote
Umberto Eco
His poetry may be divided into comic extravaganza on the one hand, and more personal work on the other. There is no one like him in the world in the former genre; as a "light poet" he is preferable to John Betjeman – as fluent in traditional forms, his work is never vitiated by refuge in the poetical or high sentimental, and his choice of words is subtler, funnier and altogether sharper. In his other vein Plomer is fastidious, reticent, elegant and the author of some memorable and moving lines. View quote
William Plomer
I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan. View quote
Jacques Derrida
I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Poetry is nothing but healthy speech. (Henry David Thoreau)
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The best poetry of the second World war written by both British & American servicemen need not fear comparison with the generally more well highly regarded work of the 1914-18 poets. View quote
Vernon Scannell
The genuinely innovatory, the truly 'experiential' poetry is always firmly rooted in the achievement of the past. View quote
Vernon Scannell
I was the living proof of T. S Eliot's assertion that poetry can communicate before it is understood. the conscious, analytical part of my response was lulled into a kind of stupor by the rhythms and richness of the imagery of the poetry I was reading. View quote
Vernon Scannell
The best poetry of WW2, the most truthful and penetrating, poetry which is rooted in the ground of physical experience, suspicious of the abstract and conforming to the discipline of provenly effective forms. View quote
Vernon Scannell
Ther poetry of the second World War conveys the true feeling of those desolate and desperate days with an urgency and sense of truth that no other means of recording could emulate. (Vernon Scannell)
The authentic British poetry of the second world war was not a poetry of protest, still less was it inspired by patriotic enthusiasm. View quote
Vernon Scannell
I hate painting, and poetry too! Neither the one nor the other ever did any good. View quote
George II of Great Britain
I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation. View quote
Derek Walcott
Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art. View quote
Thomas Hardy