Poetry Quotes

"I think great poetry is enormously powerful,"

"I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say"

"My arms have mutinied against me brutes!My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease."

"Move him into the sun Gently its touch awoke him once,At home, whispering of fields unsown.Always it woke him, even in France,Until this morning and this snow."

"A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,May creep back, silent, to still village wellsUp half-known roads."

"Behold,A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.But the old man would not so, but slew his son..."

"There lived a sage in days of yore,And he a handsome pigtail wore;But wondered much and sorrowed moreBecause it hung behind him."

"To feel greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the naturalBeauty, is the sole business of poetry.The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason."

"Acknowledgement, and celebration, of mystery probably constitutes the most consistent theme of my poetry."

"Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you."

"There lived a sage in days of yore, And he a handsome pigtail wore; But wondered much and sorrowed more Because it hung behind him."

"I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree"

"It was not only the extreme reverence with which the young viewed him, it was the way they began to sing the songs. It was more than just mouthing the lyrics they became deeply connected to his poetry."

"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then, someone at my side says; "There, she is gone!" "Gone where?" Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout; "Here she comes!" And that is dying."

"That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous"

"The very heart of the American enterprise has been taken up by the material and by power, ... It's not the kind of country [where] you'd expect to see poetry flower."

"Poetry is one of the destinies of speech. . . . One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language."

"Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature."

"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades."

"Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words"