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Poetry Quotes by W. H. Auden

42 Poetry quotes by W. H. Auden

All Poetry quotes W. H. Auden’s page

W. H. Auden says most poetry comes from a passionate state—love, joy, grief, or rage. He argues that poetry reflects and thinks, unlike music which moves immediately. He also believes a poet’s duty is to use language well, even if readers find it hard to understand.

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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.

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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?

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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.

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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse

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“for once in our lives / Everything became a You and nothing was an It.”

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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

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Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.

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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply…

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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art…

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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only…

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All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is therefore not at all a desirable…

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My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You…

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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or…

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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around…

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The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet:…

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“The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read…

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To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not…

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One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in…

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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to…

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The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to…

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The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and…

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Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this…

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It has been said that a poem should not mean but be. This is not quite accurate. In a poem, as distinct…

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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your…

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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.

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A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

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“Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.”

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All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality…

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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use…

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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people…

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There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think…

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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my…

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More by W. H. Auden

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the…

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this is as…

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.

If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It…

“Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return”

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.

How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or…

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the…

Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral

To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.