Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry. – Michael Tippett
None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry. – Edith Hamilton
The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry. – Raoul Vaneigem
Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them. – Allen Tate
How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry. – Allen Tate
Eloquence is the poetry of prose. – William C. Bryant
I think poetry is best read to oneself. – Rickie Lee Jones
There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply. – Thom Gunn
American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet. – Diane Wakoski
But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way. – Diane Wakoski
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this. – Diane Wakoski
I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry. – Diane Wakoski
Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground. – Diane Wakoski
PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy. – Diane Wakoski
From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not. – Diane Wakoski
Poetry is, first and last, language – the rest is filler. – Mark Strand
Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments. – Mark Strand
I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony. – Mark Strand
I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes. – Mark Strand
And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written. – Mark Strand
