What Is Poetry Quotes by Tom Schulman, A. R. Ammons, Stephen Spender, Samuel Johnson, Robert Penn Warren, David Eugene Smith and many others.
Law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
If we ask a vague question, such as, ‘What is poetry?’ we expect a vague answer, such as, ‘Poetry is the music of words,’ or ‘Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.’
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.
The poem . . . is a little myth of man’s capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.
What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?
But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
Poetry is man’s rebellion against being what he is.
What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.
There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.
The bacillus of efficiency has also attacked football, and some dare to ask what’s the point in playing well. I feel tempted to tell about the time they dared to ask Borges what is poetry for, to which he answered: ‘What is a sunrise for? What are caresses for? What is the smell of coffee for?’
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.
