Poetry can't cure cancer, but it can save your life until you die. Maurice Saatchi on poetry
A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being. John Drinkwater on poetry
Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them. John Drinkwater on poetry
But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry. John Drinkwater on poetry
For while the subjects of poetry are few and recurrent, the moods of man are infinitely various and unstable. It is the same in all arts. John Drinkwater on poetry
If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry. John Drinkwater on poetry
It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse. John Drinkwater on poetry
Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course. John Drinkwater on poetry
Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way. John Drinkwater on poetry
The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music. John Drinkwater on poetry
To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential. John Drinkwater on poetry
We recognise in the finished art, which is the result of these conditions, the best words in the best order - poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible. John Drinkwater on poetry
Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race. Johann Georg Hamann on poetry
There are men who can write poetry, and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write. Henry R. Luce on poetry
What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man. Stephen Greenblatt on poetry
She was the Judy Garland of American poetry. James Dickey on poetry
I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that. James Dickey on poetry
I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity. James Dickey on poetry
If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger. Muriel Rukeyser on poetry
The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness. Muriel Rukeyser on poetry