How much of twentieth-century poetry, how much of my own…

“In the nineteenth century, poetry was a bestselling genre rather than the cultish phenomenon it is now.”

— John McWhorter

20th century poetry is a piñata. Images break from the earth when the poet strikes it.

— Diane Glancy

And, I mean, I think poetry does need to be met to some extent, especially, I guess, 19th century poetry, and for me, it's…

— Jane Campion

“If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

— Anonymous

You are damned, and we wish to share your damnation.

— Ayn Rand

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

— Joyce Carol Oates

If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

— Robert Graves

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens…

— Robert Morgan

Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I have the idea that lyric poetry is a poetry that's driven by a sense of the presence of death. That there's something unbearable…

— Edward Hirsch

“Love is poetry, poetry is love”

— Milan Kundera

Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.

— Marvin Bell

“Ah, Sofia, darlin'! On my best days, I believe in Him with all my heart." "And on your worst days?" she had asked that…

— Mary Doria Russell

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the…

— Mark Strand

The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed…

— Matthew Arnold