Gestures Quote by Rita Dove

I've always felt that a really good joke, a really good one-liner, is a really good line of poetry. It's imagistic, it's compact, there…

— Kate Clinton

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

— W. S. Merwin

I've been reading poetry publicly for 20 years, and this is what you do - you express, you sometimes dig a bit to get…

— Jill Scott

Poetry is telling something to someone.

— Marie Howe

I believe that poetry is a picture painted in colourful words. If your poem doesn't move you, then don't expect it to shake the…

— Thabang Tshabalala

And there's wordplay and there's rhythms and you have to be able to get the poetry out of it. You have to be able…

— Quentin Tarantino

Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never…

— David Whyte

Poetry is language trying to become bodily experience.

— Herbert McCabe

You know, people speak in poetry all the time. They just don't realize it.

— Sherman Alexie

Poetry is like painting: one piece takes your fancy if you stand close to it, another if you keep at some distance.

— Horace

Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.

— Joseph Brodsky

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by…

— Shirley Geok-lin Lim