And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious. – John C. Ransom
It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither. – Gerard Manley Hopkins
The cliche is dead poetry. – Gerald Brenan
Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays. – Patrick White
Fiction will always be my greatest love, with poetry close behind. – J. Courtney Sullivan
I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats. – J. Courtney Sullivan
Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm, well-being, and love for humanity – the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga. – J. Courtney Sullivan
Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem. – Maxine Hong Kingston
Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have. – John Masefield
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man it has become the amusement and delight of the few. – John Masefield
Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique. – Karl Shapiro
To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry. – Laura Riding
The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind… The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself. – Laura Riding
Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go. – Laura Riding
No art form points like poetry to this originality of language as to its essential and abiding concern. – Thomas Harrison
Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords – philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather. – Anna Jameson
I despair of ever writing excellent poetry. – Isaac Rosenberg
I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on. – Isaac Rosenberg
Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way. – Isaac Rosenberg
What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry. – Laurie Lee
