Becoming Quote by Adrienne Rich

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not…

— Mark Strand

Poetry is the inner life of a culture, its nervous system, its deepest way of imagining the world. A culture that ignores its poets,…

— Erica Jong

By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry…

— David Whyte

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level…

— Rita Dove

Poetry is a way of always paying attention to the world for me; a way of letting the world stick to me instead of…

— Mike Young

Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Poetry is something that disturbs the mainstream with minor things and it is something that breaks down active discrimination with passive things, and it…

— Kim Hyesoon

Poetry is often very critical of the culture from which it emerges. Quite often literary critics of a nationalist bent talk up the national…

— Edna Longley

In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture.

— Eliza Griswold

Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.

— Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to…

— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Poetry challenges you. Much of its importance is that it's one of the few places left in culture that makes things difficult-it asks you…

— Dan Beachy-Quick