Earth Quote by Mary Ruefle

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

— William Carlos Williams

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

— Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

— Charles Bukowski

The body of poetry is nothing but energy, waves, rhythm.

— Kim Hyesoon

A poem can use anything to talk about anything.

— Jane Hirshfield

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.

— Wallace Stevens

Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The form of a poem is invisible. A poem is not an "object." This is hard to accept in a mechanical age.

— Wendell Berry

What I see in science is a lot of imagination referring to things that are fundamental to what we are. Our cells, our history,…

— Alex Garland

A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.

— Wallace Stevens

What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it…

— Harold Bloom

Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it…

— Samuel Johnson