If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.' - A R Ammons What is poetry which does not save nations or people? - Czeslaw Milosz

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 If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it. - Lascelles Abercrombie My art is that of the 35mm kind; my poetry is of the lead and ink kind; my happiness is of the product of both; and my legacy is of the story of my soul, that my life left behind - Jeremy Aldana Poetry is a succession of questions which the poet constantly poses. - Vicente Aleixandre Poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner, overhear on the bus, God in the details, the only way to get from here to there. - Elizabeth Alexander Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. - Paul Engle Your friend's poetry is terrible," he said. Clary blinked, caught momentarily off guard. "What?...

[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. - Mark Twain I'm not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I mean, I don't think you get a true picture of people without it in writing... It's a kind of poetry, it's an emotional poetry, and, to bring it back to the literary scene, I don't think anything is true that doesn't have it, that doesn't have poetry in it. - Nelson Algren And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!" "I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy. - Jane Austen I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!- Elizabeth Bennet - Jane Austen All lives are composed of two basic elements," the squirrel said, "purpose and poetry...

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth. - Aberjhani A world without poetry and art would be too much like one without birds or flowers: bearable but a lot less enjoyable. - Aberjhani Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess. - Robert Adamson What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin line there all round everything. It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in poetry and rhetoric? - James Joyce It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like th...

The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men. - Thomas Hardy I didn't look to the shore much after this first long and memorable glimpse. I looked up at Heaven and her court of mythical creatures fixed forever in the all powerful and inscrutable stars. Ink black was the night beyond them, and they so like jewels that old poetry came back to me, the sound even of hymns sung only by men. - Anne Rice

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 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 Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. - W S Merwin The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English. - Robert Morgan A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry. - Walter Pater

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara. O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac - Frank O Hara She was the Judy Garland of American poetry. - James Dickey For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying. - Stephen Dobyns I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world. - James Laughlin ..in the last few years American poetry has come out of a poetry of complaint, not praising, and it was initially maybe rich. And it can continue to be rich if we remember that we shouldn't write out of complaint. We should write out of grief, but not grievance. Grief is rich, ecstatic. But grievance is not...