I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity. Tahar Ben Jelloun on poetry
And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will. Ezra Pound on poetry
A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry? Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did, what poetry must be. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on poetry
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking. Jean de la Bruyere on poetry
A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. W. H. Auden on poetry
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another. W. H. Auden on poetry
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. W. H. Auden on poetry
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. Denis Diderot on poetry
I never really liked poetry readings I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. Leonard Cohen on poetry
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others it's for others to use. Leonard Cohen on poetry
I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet. Leonard Cohen on poetry