Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear. – Helen Dunmore
Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony. – Horace Walpole
The first question at that time in poetry was simply the question of honesty, of sincerity. – George Oppen
It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page. – Howard Nemerov
On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people. – Hu Shih
My wife has been my greatest earthly inspiration. She excels in eloquence, the poetry of words, empathy and graciousness. – George W. Romney
And inasmuch as the bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it is my present fancy that a year from now I’ll be more contented working in an office than ever before. – Hart Crane
For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men. – Giorgos Seferis
The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism’s anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot. – Graham Joyce
The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths. – Gilbert Murray
That’s the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous. – Galway Kinnell
I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound; but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks. – Howard Nemerov
Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches. – Goldwin Smith
I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson’s poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano. – Gordon Getty
My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I’m not kidding. – Harry Mathews
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. – Gustave Flaubert
I don’t think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry at the dinner table. – Hallie Ephron
Thinking in its lower grades, is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry. – Havelock Ellis
There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred – by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans. – Helen Thomas
If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct. – Helen Vendler
There is no gilding of setting sun or glamor of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers’ wives. – Hamlin Garland
