The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'
Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.
There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.
I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.
Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.
I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed, and two others I'm working on.
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
Though my poems are about evenly split between traditionally formal work that uses rhyme and meter and classical structure, and work that is freer, I feel that the music of language remains at the core of it all. Sound, rhythm, repetition, compression - these elements of my poetry are also elements of my prose.
It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.
I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.
I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.
That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish.
Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.
Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.
There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.
So, poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown, but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry - the old maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny.
The Victorian language of flowers began with the publication of 'Le Language des Fleurs,' written by Charlotte de Latour and printed in Paris in 1819. To create the book - which was a list of flowers and their meanings - de Latour gathered references to flower symbolism throughout poetry, ancient mythology, and even medicine.
Personality is everything in art and poetry.
I wasn't afraid of being poor. I didn't want to live in a big house. I'm the perfect size for poetry. I can move around.
Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.
It's like I understand images and some people understand poetry.
And inasmuch as the bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it is my present fancy that a year from now I'll be more contented working in an office than ever before.
Poetry and prayer are very similar.
Poetry is this gorgeous, complex history rendered in verse and song, a blueprint that can lead you back into the world after you've walked into air.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
People who read poetry, for example, like the feel, the heft and the smell of a book.
Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.
