Art Quote by Anonymous

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

— Paul Valery

“But is this not what poetry must do? To say the nothing that cannot be said?”

— John Crowley

Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.

— A. E. Housman

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

— Pattiann Rogers

Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

— Henry David Thoreau

A poem can use anything to talk about anything.

— Jane Hirshfield

“If anything can be said in prose, then poetry should be saved for saying nothing.”

— Pierre Albert-Birot

What can be explained is not poetry.

— Anonymous

For even bad poetry has relevance for what it does not say for what it leaves out.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

when a poem says something that could not have been said in any other way, in music, prose, sculpture, movement or paint, then it…

— Sybil Marshall

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

— Charles Bukowski

“We begin to say something that cannot be said. When you see on the front page a woman in Iraq who's just seen her…

— W.S. Merwin