|
|
|
|
|
1
|
|
A poem should not mean
But be.
(Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), U.S. poet. Ars Poetica (l. 23-24). . .
New Oxford Book of American Verse, The. Richard Ellmann, ed. (1976) Oxford University Press.)
More quotations from:
Archibald MacLeish
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2
|
|
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "The Poet," Essays, Second Series (1844).)
More quotations from:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3
|
|
Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.... A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually—that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too— but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.
(Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), U.S. poet. The Life of Poetry, ch. 1 (1949).)
More quotations from:
Muriel Rukeyser
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4
|
|
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "The Poet," Essays, Second Series (1844).)
More quotations from:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5
|
|
The mind is the great poem of winter, the man,
Who, to find what will suffice,
Destroys romantic tenements
Of rose and ice....
(Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Man and Bottle.")
More quotations from:
Wallace Stevens
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6
|
|
A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.
(Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Austrian writer. Trans. by Harry Zohn, originally published in Beim Wort genommen (1955). Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths, University of Chicago Press (1990).)
More quotations from:
Karl Kraus
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
7
|
|
Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell.'
(Frank O'Hara (1926-1966), U.S. poet. A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island (l. 73-75). . .
Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry, The. Helen Vendler, ed. (1985) The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.)
More quotations from:
Frank O'Hara
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8
|
|
I have never felt a placard and a poem are in any way similar.
(Kristin Hunter (b. 1931), African American author. Black Women Writers at Work, ch. 6, by Claudia Tate (1983).
On why her writing was not directly "political.")
More quotations from:
Kristin Hunter
|
|
|
|
Home
