[P]oetry shares our misery, it is agitated with all our uneasiness; like us, it goes, comes, flies, never rests. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)
Poetry is frosted fire. – J. Patrick Lewis, www.jpatricklewis.com
The poet sees and selects from on high and afar, and hardly inquires about what is near at hand. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)
A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer…. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring. – E.B. White
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. – Rita Dove
The poet… may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. – Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, 1950
Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. – Dennis Gabor
Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out…. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. – A.E. Housman
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. – T.S. Eliot, Dante, 1920
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand. – Plato
I love writing poetry because poetry can be anything you want it to be — just like daydreaming. There are no rules except those in your heart and your own pen. – Terri Guillemets, “Quiet time with my soul,” 1998
I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. – Robert Frost, 1935
To have great poets there must be great audiences too. – Walt Whitman
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. – Oscar Wilde
A poet can survive everything but a misprint. – Oscar Wilde
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. – Robert Frost
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose. – Voltaire
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. – Gilbert K. Chesterton
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. – Plutarch
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment. – Carl Sandburg
