Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.
Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.
Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.
To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry.
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.
Lamantia is faith building, encouraging poetry in that it abstractly hugs you by finally capturing the inexpressible. It’s an experience similar to relief, reading his poems.
True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know.
The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.
Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life – when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.
The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.
That’s the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.
Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.
Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There’s no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn’t. It’s completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.
I was excited by what my painter friends were doing, and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too, and that was a wonderful little, fizzy sort of world.
Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?
Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn’t. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.
I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I’ve always read poetry; I’ve always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.
I really enjoy English and poetry and writing classes.
The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace – here on earth.
I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.
I have been writing poetry ever since I was in high school. My poetry mainly concerned the theme of love. And that, of course, is an endless subject.
San Diego shaped me a lot. The visual landscapes, the emotional panoramas, the teachers and mentors I had from the third grade through San Diego High – it’s all a big part of the poetry fountain that I continue to drink from.
I didn’t know until later, but my uncle was quite a famous bohemian in Glasgow, and he played guitar. My father was a kind of a poetic bohemian, and he read me poetry.
One of the most treasured books that I own is Donald Allen’s ‘The New American Poetry, 1945-1960.’ It was a totem of great importance and potency to my group of writer friends in college from 1960 to 1964.
The nerds are my favourite sort of boys – any guy with a passion – whether it be physics or film or writing or poetry even, I think it’s super sweet and it’s very attractive for a female.
