VirRex Poetry
:

Famous Poets Quotations - Top 30 Poetry Quotations by Famous Poets



  • "For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history."
    -- Aristotle

  • "Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one."
    -- W. H. Auden

  • "Eloquence is the poetry of prose."
    -- William C. Bryant

  • "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."
    -- Emily Dickinson

  • "How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery."
    -- Elizabeth Drew

  • "She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you."
    -- Bob Dylan

  • "When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences."
    -- T S Eliot

  • "Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting."
    -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • "Only poetry inspires poetry."
    -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • "Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."
    -- Robert Frost

  • "The man is either mad, or he is making verses."
    -- Horace

  • "Good religious poetry . . . is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout."
    -- A. E. Housman

  • "I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer."
    -- Langston Hughes

  • "I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged . . . I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out."
    -- Erica Jong

  • "As I am a poet I express what I believe, and I fight against whatever I oppose, in poetry."
    -- June Jordan

  • "Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."
    -- James Joyce

  • "Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity --it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."
    -- John Keats

  • "Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words."
    -- Archibald MacLeish

  • "I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it."
    -- Marianne Moore

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

  • "And he whose fustian's so sublimely bad/ It is not poetry, but prose run mad."
    -- Alexander Pope

  • "I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself."
    -- Carl Sandburg

  • "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."
    -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

  • "I owe everything to a system that made me learn by heart till I wept. As a result I have thousands of lines of poetry by heart. I owe everything to this."
    -- George Steiner

  • "Everything is complicated; if that we not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore."
    -- Wallace Stevens

  • "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."
    -- Henry David Thoreau

  • "How do poems grow? They grow out of your life."
    -- Robert Penn Warren

  • "All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
    -- William Wordsworth

  • "A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote."
    -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

    Resource Box - © Danielle Hollister (2005) is the Publisher of BellaOnline Quotations Zine
    - A free newsletter for quote lovers featuring more than 10,000 quotations in dozens of categories like - love, friendship, children, inspiration, success, wisdom, family, life, and many more; plus freebies and links to related resources. All new subscribers get one free ad. Read it - http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art8364.asp

    MORE RESOURCES:
    		•  RELATED ARTICLES
    Here And There
    My eyes opened. I am still alive; Living on planet earth.
    Mechanical Poetry
    Do you ever stare at the paper, waiting for poetic inspiration? Well, you can stop waiting and start using systematic techniques for creating poetry. If it seems too mechanical or artificial at first, don't worry.
    Asha of Darfur [A poem with a commentary by the author]
    Asha of DarfurCry, cry-oh little Darfur woman For your sister Janjaweed- [in Sudan's merciless region-who was raped to death); Where rape and death run ramped;And Asha prays the Arabs don't' hear Here sobbing little black tears? ?in fear she will be chained to a bedIn Darfur, by the insidious justice Of the Arabs, who run ramped?Ah, yes! In Darfur you've guessed, It is not a crime to raped and arrested; By the very one who raped, and terrorizedYou; it is the conquest?Satan's ribs!..
    The Valley Of Pain
    We were exiled from the Garden of Eden. Its sinless wonders nevermore to regain.
    Top 20 Poetry Quotations
    Explore the meaning of poetry and the motivation of poets with this special collection of evocative quotations..
    The Man Who Could Not Say Sorry For His Sins
    Sorry would be a start.Though you cant take back your mistakes, and you cant unravel time, you'd think there would be remorse, for such a self serving crime, to send others out to die, to pay the blood price you have decreed, when its purely posturing and posing, all about vanity and greed, to secure a perceived niche in history, glowing down the years, is the extent of your ambition, is the puny limit of your fears, when those you have sent to die, believing implicitly in you, leave relatives behind who see, that nothing you said was true, there is no thought now for those, whose number you dont count, they are yesterdays forgotten, though daily they still mount, no thought of resignation, no apology to those left behind, just onward with the ego, fast forward from those times, as if nothing ever happened, as if your lies are quite ok, as if now is what to focus on, and then was another day, lost back in the mists of time, obscured by clouds half seen, not an affront to the living, not impeachable and obscene, you may want to move on now, and ignore your past infamy, but you should be tried for treason, and jailed for blasphemy.
    Lifes Too Short
    Time goes by to quickly to hold your feelings inside Especially when their so strong even if they don't abide..
    Two Poems: Boyhood, and Old Age [with a note on style]
    BoyhoodOh me! Thy glorious days have flown! I mealy noticed, now they're gone, How quickly passed the flowers! Time does not stop youth's bells; It was like I was in a spell, And my face now shows the hours!Ah yes! My youthful past days, Still lively in my golden age, When all was quick and new Now wrapped in pictures and books, And friends and family were all I knew And love was shown by friendly looks!#741 6/26/05Old AgeThey stop by to see me now To find what's old and new, They peer into my-everything, And criticize my views; They tell me what I should like, And that I should be grieved-These are my fragile friends That takes the strongest liberties?I mean to take the buzzer off; And put the phone outside the door; In vain I speak to tell them why -I shan't live here anymore!#742 6/26/05A note on Style: some people ask, "What style of poetry to you like the best?" I can never answer that question; it is open-ended to me. If I feel like breaking free from tradition as in the poem of: "Old Age," so be it; and if I feel traditional verse, a stricter formal pattern should be used, as in "Boyhood," and can contribute richly to the poem, so it is.
    Two Poems: San Jeronimo Brook & [in English and Spanish]
    Fair Andes! Thy arms reach highOf iron-woven solid stone Thu art a condor to the skyOf glory hidden in thy heartSo many paths, a maze of art?In thy old, Mantaro ValleyWhere adobes, breathe and tremble Beyond your rustic shadowsThere lays the prettiest of brooksIs my heart, within its stream!My image deeply carved, rippledIn its undiluted shallow watersWaiting, just waiting for me?As it opens up, opens up my soulMy rippled soul-searching-eyes!..
    Poetry and Popular Culture
    Is poetry too complicated for the average reader? Is it too cryptic, scholarly? If you ask a large group of average people what they like or don't like about poetry, you'll get a few different answers, but there is an overwhelmingly common category of responses.One of the main reasons that people say they aren't addicted to contemporary poetry is that they feel it is too cryptic.
    A Death in Cajamarca, Peru (Atahualpa, in Cajamarca ((in English and Spanish))
    The Epic Poem:A Death in Cajamarca, Peru [Atahualpa, in Cajamarca]Advance: This is a version, not a translation of any kind, on the incarceration and death of Atahualpa the Inca King of the Inca Empire, in the 16th century (Peru).Atahualpa, enduring in Cajamarca Greeted by De Soto, his free friend from Spain! "Be Calm! These times will be tolerant to you.
    In Poetry: Meaning of Words [And ...Rocket-belt]
    In Poetry: Meaning of WordsWhen I write poetry, I check out the meaning of words for too often they sound the same, but once written, and if spelled wrong, in consequence, give a complete different meaning of what I had intended; this I call a moment of damage control. If my rhyme is flat, and my cadence is off, so what, I can survive, as long as the meaning of my words are not; and are as I meant them to be.
    Bleed
    now is not the time to open open that great door again not the time to be more tolerant not the time to play to winnow is not the time for justice evolution mercy choices not the time to pet the puppies yipping with pathetic voicesnow is not the time for kindness not the time for compromise not the time for loving blindness not the time to close my eyesnow for one too many people not that i have gained no good heart has sown but flesh is reaping tears to mind and wasted bloodnow my inner wolf seeks equals only those whose chords can howl deadly whether lone or social defending young or on the prowltell me not that you would die upon the spines of my displeasure live for me and for you will i cherish each cell as if a treasureput me not inside a cage but roam with me through snow and sun be by my side or breathe my dust for i shall bleed again for noneNiki Lasher Artist, Writer, and Webmatron http://www.kthulah.
    Lucky...
    You make me smile like I've seldom done before You give me a reason to want more and more..
    Wars, Air of Ambiguity [for: Lt. Laura Walker] in SPANISH and English
    Wars, air of AmbiguityDedicated to 1st. Lt.
    RISK
    Do not be afraid to shine. This world needs what you have to give.
    The King and Delka & Moiromma: the Cold Planet [Parts 25 and 26]
    #25The King and Delka [Split Mawkishness-on Moiromma /Part V]Sickly SentimentalityI have sought out friends Only to find rawness Of their passion; And the uniformity Of their vision.Who out there can know My cerebral verve?(Only the long dead)By King Moir I[Of Moiromma]Ah! the aimless cosmos come back to his mind as he stands on his balcony looking up into he eerie dark.
    Satirical Poetry About Tony Blair
    All Hail.Is your hospital full of aliens, despite new cleaning firms, Antenna waving buggies, And creepy crawly germs, Then dont waste another second, now were into election spin, Just complain, over and again, and up pops smiley smiley grin.
    Robert Burns Love Poem: A Red, Red Rose
    Robert Burns, a poor man, an educated man, and a ladies' man, is representative of Scotland, much like whisky, haggis, bagpipes, and kilts. He lived a life shortened by rheumatic heart disease, 1759-1796, but his life journey through poverty, informal education, disappointed love, nationalism, and literary and financial success can be identified by all Scots and common men the world over.
    Ive Learned
    You cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved.



    Poetry | Site Map | VirRex | Map | Web Domain Directory | Greeting | Directory | Photo Gallery Card | Newey | View Card | Free Calendar
    © 2006 - 2009