Poetry Quotes · Page 18

“I'm at that place I grew up to leave.”

— Adrian C. Louis

A poem should improve on the blank page.

— Nicanor Parra

Poet's food is love and fame.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love to write poetry.

— Shayne Ward

Poetry is composing for the breath.

— Peter Davison

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

— Paul Celan

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

— Robert Frost

Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

— Diane Wakoski

In this story I am the poet You're the poetry.

— Arzum Uzun

Poetry makes people nervous. Especially in schools.

— Sarah Kay

I think everything should be in verse. 'The New York Times' should be in verse.

— David Ives

If you can feel the glory, shame, fame, or relate to the story.. Then, that's real.

— Raghib Clitso

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

— Countee Cullen

I only submit the poems I think are the strongest.

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“because white men can't police their imagination black people are dying”

— Claudia Rankine

The mad is either insane or he is composing verses.

— Horace

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how…

— Robert Fitzgerald

“Tho' you're tired and weary, still journey on, Till you come to your happy abode, Where all the love you've been dreaming…

— Anonymous

After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

— Wallace Stevens

I sometimes photograph my poems and get obsessive about this and spend a lot of time squatting over them but it's a…

— Tim Key

It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.

— Anonymous

“There’s too much risk in loving,’ the young boy said, ‘no,’ said the old man, ‘there’s too much risk in not.”

— Atticus Poetry

I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we…

— John Burnside

“Her wings have been clipped for centuries, yet she still takes flight at night when the moon is full and bright.”

— Melody Lee

“And when you are foolish enough to identify yourself as a poet, your interlocutors will often ask: A PUBLISHED Poet? And when…

— Ben Lerner

“From a Berkeley Notebook' ~Denis Johnson One changes so much from moment to moment that when one hugs oneself against the chill…

— Denis Johnson

Poetry was my dirty little secret when I was a fiction writer at Iowa, and then fiction became my dirty little secret…

— Jenny Zhang

“I have nothing but duct-taped syntax to offer them-- noise of jury-rigged verse, of entire days burned by the focus of a…

— B.J. Ward

All Of Me [Verse 1:] What would I do without your smart mouth? Drawing me in, and you kicking me out You've…

— Corey JUSTICECR3W Whitmore

Andy Brown is one of our most interesting and exciting younger poets. With its love of ideas and language, his work demonstrates…

— John Burnside

I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in…

— Andrew Motion

“When asked about rewriting, Ernest Hemingway said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was…

— Susan M. Tiberghien

Poetry is necessary, but is the poet?

— Carlos Drummond de Andrade

“Stars are shining, my dreams too”

— Anonymous

Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.

— Anonymous

To be a poet you have to experiment.

— Matthea Harvey

A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer.

— Jack Spicer

“I can be black magic Or boring as hell.”

— Alex Lemon

Slang is a poor man's poetry

— John Moore

More modern poetry is written than read.

— P. J. O'Rourke