Art Quote by Octavio Paz

“A poem is a heroic act of integration that binds into rough harmony the chorus of forces within and outside the soul. A poem…

— Tony Hoagland

Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I would come to understand there is no poem separable from its source. I began to see that poems are not just an individual…

— Eavan Boland

Many a poem is marred by a superfluous word.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Writing poetry is about learning to pare down the poem to the most essential words. Every word used has to be crucial to the…

— Harley King

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

— William Carlos Williams

Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path…

— Jane Hirshfield

“Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity for our existence. It forms the quality of light from which we predicate our…

— Audre Lorde

Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in…

— T. S. Eliot

“Poetry by its very nature is subversive . . . It turns words inside out, confounds meaning, changes black and white to ambiguous shades…

— Cristina Garcia

Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned.

— Emma Lazarus

“It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's depth of…

— Jane Hirshfield