Some scrap of a childish song hath often been a truer alms than all the benevolent societies could give. This is the best missionary, knowing when she may knock at the door of the most curmudgeonly hearts, without being turned away unheard. For poesy is love’s chosen apostle, and the very almoner of God. She is the home of the outcast, and the wealth of the needy.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
We must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquility” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not “recollected” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is “tranquil” only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
Poetry is indispensable –if I only knew what for.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Novelist, Dramatist, Playwright, Artist
Poetry is the shortest way of saying something. It lets us express a dime’s worth of ideas, or a quarter’s worth of emotion, with a nickel’s worth of words.
—Dero A. Saunders (1914–2002) American Journalist, Scholar
Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French Poet, Politician, Historian
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
—Philip Massinger (1583–1640) English Dramatist
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth; for all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of a face; and true proportions the beauty of architecture; as true measures that of harmony and music. In poetry, which is all fable, truth still is the perfection.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before.
—Shel Silverstein (1930–99) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Short story Author, Playwright, Author, Songwriter
To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.
—James Fenton
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
—John Keats (1795–1821) English Poet
The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge.
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) English Satirist, Novelist, Author
You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
All one’s inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) French Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.
—George Farquhar (1677–1707) Irish Dramatist
The poet is like the prince of clouds
Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer;
Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn’t declaim or explain, it presents.
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American Poet, Novelist, Cultural Historian
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Novelist, Dramatist, Playwright, Artist
Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my “poems” are competing.
—e. e. cummings (1894–1962) American Poet, Writer, Painter
An artist who works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who moulds his thought in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody’s use, and glorify them by his handling.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.
—Billy Collins (b.1941) American Poet
The eye is the notebook of the poet.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
—Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American Biographer, Novelist, Socialist
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
—Don Marquis (1878–1937) American Humorist, Journalist, Novelist, Playwright, Writer
Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French Poet, Politician, Historian