poetry quotes

Denise Levertov: 

I don't think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.

Denise Levertov: 

A poetry articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record. 

Gustave Flaubert: 

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

John Adams: 

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Marge Piercy: 

With my poems, I finally won even my mother. The longest wooing of my life. 
Braided Lives


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.
The Conservative


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.

Robert Frost: 

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Robert Penn Warren: 

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see --i t is, rather, a light by which we may see -- and what we see is life.

Rollo May: 

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

Virginia Woolf: 

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Wilfred Owen: 

All the poet can do today is warn.
That is why true Poets must be truthful.