Discipline Quote by Derek Walcott

If you want a definition of poetry, say: Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what…

— Dylan Thomas

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we…

— Robert Morgan

For poetry is, I believe, always an act of the spirit. The poem teaches us something while we make it. The poem makes you…

— May Sarton

A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

— Paul Verlaine

The main thing a poem ought to be is musical. It should be rhythmic. You should hear it as a musical piece in your…

— John Cooper Clarke

A poem is a small machine made of words. . .Its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.

— William Carlos Williams

“I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It…

— William Carlos Williams

A poem is what the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text.

— Louise Rosenblatt

Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.

— C. S. Lewis

What writing a poem really does - and what figuring how to perform effectively really does - is forces people to listen to you.…

— Daveed Diggs

Poetry is a language for when you can't quite write prose about something, you can't quite say it, but if you do a poem,…

— Sakyong Mipham