I'm not a great poetry fan.

There are few greater treasures to be acquired in youth than great poetry-and prose-stored in the memory. At the time one may resent the…

— Richard Livingstone

Because science flourishes, must poesy decline? The complaint serves but to betray the weakness of the class who urge it. True, in an age…

— Hugh Miller

As a fairly innocent teenager, growing up in a village in Wales, I just thought, "God, I would like to go and hang about…

— Andrew Davies

I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's…

— Diane Wakoski

The most beautiful conception of immortality of which I know, and certainly one that by contrast shows the utter vulgarity of Christian ideas, is…

— Revilo P. Oliver

Even if great poetry continues to be written, it has retreated from the center of literary life. Though supported by a loyal coterie, poetry…

— Dana Gioia

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

— Robinson Jeffers

There's great poetry in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm not interested in trying to prove whether this paragraph is as…

— Cecil Williams

A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too…

— Fernando Pessoa

All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.

— Edith Sitwell

The more serious poetry of the race has a philosophical structure of thought. It contains beliefs and conceptions in regard to the nature of…

— Joseph Alexander Leighton

A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to…

— Kenneth Clark

Michel Aflaq - is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics.

— Elliott Colla

Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of…

— Edward Abbey

... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?

— Erica Jong