Poetry Quotes

I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought, 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry,'

Jewel

American singer-songwriter

In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.

James Fenton

Professor

It just happens to be that people like to associate poetry and rap music. I think that idea is kind of corny.

Earl Sweatshirt

To different minds, poetry may present different phases. To me, the reverent faith of the people I lived among, and their faithful everyday living, was poetry; blossoms and trees and blue shies were poetry. God himself was poetry.

Lucy Larcom

American teacher

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

German poet

There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.

Billy Collins

American poet

I'm a black Catholic raised in Decatur, Georgia, which was very gang-infested. Then, I went to an all-white private high school and excelled in sports and wrote poetry, then played football at the University of Georgia, minoring in drama.

Omari Hardwick

American actor

You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.

Lena Dunham

American writer

I think the biggest thing that I have to do is to remind people that poetry is there for us to turn to not only to remind us that we're not alone - for example, if we are grieving the loss of someone - but also to help us celebrate our joys. That's why so many people I know who've gotten married will have a poem read at the wedding.

Natasha Trethewey

American poet

I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.

Ed Westwick

Actor

Times are such that poetry has been slowly drifting away from our songs and the language of conversation is used a lot more as lyrics. I believe such attempts create mundane songs, and they hardly stand the test of time.

M. Jayachandran

composer, singer, and musician.

We need creativity. We need more poetry after Auschwitz.

Rithy Panh

Cambodian film director

I was lucky to have read a lot of poetry when I was younger; it helped me to remember a way to write.

Benjamin Clementine

British composer

There's always a need at a critical time for poetry.

Derek Walcott

Saint Lucian poet

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Oscar Wilde

Irish poet

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

Gordon Getty

American businessman

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

John Drinkwater

English poet

Poetry is that sentiment of the soul, or faculty of the mind, which enables its possessor to appreciate and realize the heights and depths of human experience. It is the power to feel pleasure or suffer pain in all its exquisiteness and intensity.

Orson F. Whitney

Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church

Performance poetry is not one genre. Some chant, sing and dance. Some stand rooted to the spot and stare. Some chat their way in and out of their poems like stand-ups. Some confess, some rage. Some play with words, some talk plain. The point is, it's live and in the moment.

Michael Rosen

Author

In Arlington, people would laugh at you if you tried to get people to look at your drawings or listen to your poetry. It was like you thought you were special.

Eileen Myles

American poet

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