Imaginary gardens with real toads in them. ~Marianne Moore's definition of poetry, "Poetry," Collected
Poems, 1951
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Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. ~Eli Khamarov, The
Shadow Zone
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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato, Ion
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A poet can survive everything but a misprint. ~Oscar Wilde
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ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i'd kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter....
~Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr., "kidnap poem"
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A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed
that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd
about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings
torment your soul." ~Soren Kierkegaard
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The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his
death bed. ~W.B. Yeats
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Only the poet has any right to be sorry for the poor, if he has anything to spare when he has thought of the
dull, commonplace rich. William Bolitho
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The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau
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To have great poets there must be great audiences too. ~Walt Whitman
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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker. ~Allen Tate
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Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader
recognizes as his own. ~Salvatore Quasimodo
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The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood. ~Jean Cocteau, Le Rappel á l'ordre,
1926
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You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. ~John Ciardi, Simmons
Review, Fall 1962
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Poetry is not always words. ~Audrey Foris
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Poetry, like the moon, does not advertise anything. ~William Blissett
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A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, 1957
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We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of
the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering,
these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what
we stay alive for. Dead Poet's Society
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A poem should not mean
But be.
~Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica, 1926
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You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery of having been moved
by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem
can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. ~Dylan Thomas, Poetic Manifesto, 1961
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It's impossible to write poetry in front of the TV
Almost impossible not to write in the sun
In the woods, every breath is a poem
The words visibly form in the sunbeams,
to those who look for them.
~Daisey Verlaef
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Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy
tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be
literary together, and would appal them if it did. ~Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe
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I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. ~Robert Frost, 1935
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