Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry. Gustave Flaubert on poetry
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music. Ezra Pound on poetry
Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. A. E. Housman on poetry
All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry. Gustave Flaubert on poetry
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar. Percy Bysshe Shelley on poetry
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Percy Bysshe Shelley on poetry
Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. Percy Bysshe Shelley on poetry
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. James Joyce on poetry
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. John Updike on poetry
Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony. Horace Walpole on poetry
Poetry is not only dream and vision it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before. Audre Lorde on poetry
Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind. Lascelles Abercrombie on poetry
But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry. Chinua Achebe on poetry
Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for. Jean Cocteau on poetry
Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen. Gertrude Stein on poetry
France is not poetic she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic. Charles Baudelaire on poetry
I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while. Naguib Mahfouz on poetry
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. Don Marquis on poetry
When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music. Denis Diderot on poetry