How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.

When the exceptional historian comes along, you have a poet.

— Melvin B. Tolson

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.

— David Whyte

You don't go after poetry, you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a…

— Phyllis Gotlieb

Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal…

— Christopher Morley

“The word poetry comes from the Greek word poiesis which just means “a making”. So if you’ve made it, it’s poetry. Even if it’s…

— Benedict Smith

“Poetry comes out of you like a pot of oatmeal boiling over.”

— Dennis Vickers

That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.

— Walter Savage Landor

There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels…

— Thomas Carlyle

She is unable to dream, think or love. In a woman, poetry never comes naturally, but always as the result of education. Only the…

— Edmond de Goncourt

Poetry, my dear friends, is a sacred incarnation of a smile. Poetry is a sigh that dries the tears. Poetry is a spirit who…

— Khalil Gibran

The poetry that comes from the squaring off between and the circling is worth it, finding beauty in the dissonance.

— Tool

Poetry comes fine-spun from a mind at peace.

— Ovid

Poetry comes out of an elite experience, the experience of people whose ears are opened to the song of the universe.

— Joseph Campbell

That impulse I think is a form of love. Poetry is something that comes to you, rather than your having to work out its…

— Judith Wright

My love of poetry comes from the "actualization" I experienced in the poetry of others. And I was reading it silently and there is…

— Anne Waldman