Heart Quote by Cheryl Hines

Some good, some so-so, and lots plain bad: that's how a book of poems is made, my Friend.

— Martial

Poetry is like fish: if it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the cat.

— Osbert Sitwell

Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance…

— Matthew Arnold

Good poetry is like effective prayer, it feeds the human spirit, it nourishes, it puts us in touch with forces far greater than ourselves

— Lorna Goodison

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of…

— Philip Larkin

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

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poetry is partly sympathy, don't you think? If it's any good, it gets people to think about others' points of view.

— Edwin Morgan

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

— Oscar Wilde

There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in evrything, everywhere we look.

— Ali Smith

Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between…

— Harry Mathews

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry…

— Henry David Thoreau

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

— Robert Hass