Poetry has countless definitions however two things stand out the rhythm and emotional feeling Poetry creates in the listeners.Depending on your experience with poetry your definition will be different.For some person’s, poetry has been an outflow of emotions, grief, and loneliness.While others it’s the way they understand to speak.In this blog post is a list of quotes about poetry from famous poets.These statements are an attempt of the poets to define poetry.Based on their experience with poetry.
Some of the quotes will resonate with you depending on your experience with poetry.
For me, it is Carl Sandburg’s ” Poetry is an echo that causes a shadow to dance”
1.”Genuine Poetry can communicate before it’s understood”— T.S. Eliot
2. “Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow” ~ A.P.J Abdul Kalam
3.” Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance” —- Carl Sandburg
4. “The poet is the priest of the invisible.”— Wallace Stevens, from Opus Posthumous.
5. “I would define … the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.”— Edgar Allan Poe, from “The Poetic Principle.”
6. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” — William Wordsworth, from “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.”
7. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” –Emily Dickinson
8. “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” ~W. H. Auden
9. “Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” ~Khalil Gibran
10. “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley, from A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays.
11. “Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.” — Carl Sandburg, from The Atlantic, March 1923
12. “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” ~Robert Frost
13. “Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.” ~W.H. Auden
14. “Poetry is all nouns and verbs.”- Marianne Moore
15. “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech”- Simonides
16. “The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.”~W. Somerset Maugham
17. “One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.” ~Voltaire
18. “Poetry is a mug’s game.”- T. S. Eliot
19. “Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind.”- Maxwell Bodenheim
20. “Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment.”- Carl Sandburg
21. “Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.”- William Butler Yeats
22.”Poetry is the utterance of deep and heartfelt truth. The true poet is very near the oracle.”- Edward Hubbell Chapin
23. “The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.”- Percival
24. “Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men’s souls.”- James Russell Lowell
25. “Poetry, the eldest sister of all arts, and parent of most.”- William Congreve
26. “When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence.”- John F. Kennedy
27. “The essentials of poetry are rhythm, dance and the human voice.”- Earle Birney
28. “Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises.”- Edith Sitwell
29.”Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language or music without atmosphere.”- James Martineau
30.”Poetry, therefore, we will call Musical Thought.”- Thomas Carlyle
31. “Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.”- Stephane Mallarme
32.” Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
33.”When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.”- Oliver Wendell Holmes
34. ” I have the feeling when I write poetry that I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. You don’t think about whether you’re going to get money or fame, you just do it.”- Doris Lund
35.”You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.”- Joseph Joubert
36. “Poetry is one of the ancient art and it begins as did all the fine arts within the original wilderness of the earth” ~ Mary Oliver
37. “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful” ~ Rita Dove
38. “Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution and the raising of consciousness” ~ Alice Walker
39.”You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory,in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what is in your heart.” ~ Carol Ann Duffy
40. “There’s a reason poets often say, “Poetry saved my life”, for often the blank page is the only one listening to the souls suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.” ~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
41. “Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small pace: you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” ~ Sylvia Plath
42. . “Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.” ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Conclusion
Poetry is beauty.We have looked at some of the most beautiful quotes about poetry.
Now it’s your turn, which of the quotes about poetry from these authors and writers is your favorite.Is there any quote that isn’t on the list?I would love to know.
Let me know in the comments section.
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