A lot of people think, 'I'll give acting or poetry or filmmaking a try. And if it doesn't work out I'll go get a law degree, do something else that's more practical.' For me I went the reverse way. I lived the back-up plan. Brit Marling on poetry
I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies. Boris Pasternak on poetry
I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords. Andrew Bird on poetry
The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class, and everyone from it I've met, and think they're incredibly witty, inventive - there's a lot of poetry there. Martin Amis on poetry
A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel. Chaim Potok on poetry
Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true. Lafcadio Hearn on poetry
It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese. Lafcadio Hearn on poetry
I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry. Lafcadio Hearn on poetry
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. Steven Pinker on poetry
I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible. Seamus Heaney on poetry
Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew. Seamus Heaney on poetry
The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also. Seamus Heaney on poetry
The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself - as a vocation and an elevation almost. Seamus Heaney on poetry
Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. Theodore Sturgeon on poetry
I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator. Allen Ginsberg on poetry
In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you. Abbas Kiarostami on poetry
Poetry always runs away from you - it's very difficult to grasp it, and every time you read it, depending on your conditions, you will have a different grasp of it. Whereas with a novel, once you have read it, you have grasped it. Abbas Kiarostami on poetry
Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world. Archibald MacLeish on poetry
While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song. David Antin on poetry
I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do. David Antin on poetry