Effects Quote by Vern Rutsala

Poems' deep work is a matter of language, but also a matter of life. One part of that work is to draw into our…

— Jane Hirshfield

What poetry is asking us to accept can be difficult. Our proximity to our mortality, the fragility of our existence, how close we live…

— Matthew Zapruder

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.

— David Whyte

“The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back…

— David Whyte

Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.

— John Denham

What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is…

— Adrienne Rich

There is all this stuff about how sensitive poets are and how in touch with feelings, etc. they are, but really all we care…

— Matthew Zapruder

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems…

— James Joyce

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

— Lucille Clifton

“One difficulty that people seeking to modernize hymnals and the language of worship inevitably run into is that contemporaries are never the best judges…

— Kathleen Norris

The truth is that the poems are ecstatic.

— Derek Walcott

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

— Friedrich Nietzsche