Army Quote by John Ashbery

Maybe poetry's not so important, but ... it makes life worth living.

— Arda Collins

Poetry can save the world. I'm a real believer in its power of healing and transforming. I wish more people read it ... Poetry…

— Carol Muske-Dukes

I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

— Adrienne Rich

Poetry is perhaps what teaches us to nurture the charming illusion: how to be reborn out of ourselves over and over again, and use…

— Mahmoud Darwish

Poetry can keep life itself alive. You can endure almost anything as long as you can sing about it.

— James Wright

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

I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression…

— Alfred Nobel

Poetry is a means of redemption.

— Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe.

— Camille Paglia

It's a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life.

— Billy Collins

Poetry asks people to have values, form opinions, care about some other part of experience besides making money and being successful on the job.

— Toi Derricotte

This, in the end, might be the greatest social good of poetry: to get us to live differently, with a different sort of thinking…

— Matthew Zapruder