The poet is the priest of the invisible. Wallace Stevens, Adagia
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madam. Wallace Stevens, A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
There’s nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German. Paul Celan, German poet, letter to relatives 2 August 1948
My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away. Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963
Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music. Confucius 551-479 B.C.
Prose poets like blank-verse, I’m fond of rhyme,
Good workmen never quarrel with their tools. Lord Byron, Don Juan
Milton’s the prince of poets – so we say;
A little heavy, but no less divine. ibid.
A drowsy frowzy poem, called The Excursion,
Writ in a manner which is my aversion. ibid.
When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves.
They little think what mischief is in hand. ibid.
Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse,
And brother Coleridge lull the baby at nurse. Lord Byron
I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence – this may look like affectation – but it is my real opinion – it is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake. Lord Byron
I have nothing to say
and I am saying it and that is
poetry. John Cage, Lecture on Nothing, 1961
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. Robert Frost
Nor second he that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy,
The secrets of th’ abyss to spy.
He passed the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,
Where angels tremble, while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night. Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy, re Milton
Thoughts, that breathe, and words, that burn. ibid.
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
Beneath the good how far – but far above the great. ibid.
The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose. Thomas Gray
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed. John Keats, Sleep and Poetry, 1817
And they shall be accounted poet kings
Who simply tell the most heart-easing things. ibid.
A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder. John Keats, 1817
8We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us – and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. John Keats 1818
If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. John Keats 1818
Prose is for ideas, verse is for vision. Henrik Ibsen, Rhymed Letter for Fru Helberg, 1871
Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry. Gustave Flaubert, 1821-80
Poetry in motion. Paul Kaufman and Mike Anthony, title of song 1960
Poets ... though liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions. David Hume, A Treatise upon Human Nature
All poets are mad. Robert Burton, English clergyman & scholar
The little girl had the making of a poet in her who, being told to be sure of her meaning before she spoke, said, ‘How can I know what I think till I see what I say?’ Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought, 1926
Poetry wants something enormous, barbarous, savage. Denis Diderot, 1713-84, French philosopher
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper. W H Auden, In Memory of W B Yeats, 1940
As civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Edinburgh Review 1843
I used to think all poets were Byronic –
Mad, bad and dangerous to know.
And then I met a few. Yes it’s ironic –
I used to think all poets were Byronic.
They’re mostly wicked as a ginless tonic
And wild as pension plans. Wendy Cope, Triolet, 1986
Poetry’s another word
For losing everything.
Except purity of heart. Paul Durcan, Christmas Day 1996
What is poetry? ... The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions. John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1856
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one. ibid.
Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Table Talk
That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense. ibid.
Prose = words in their best order; – poetry = the best words in the best order. ibid.
Of all the literary scenes
Saddest this sight to me:
The graves of little magazines
Who died to make verse free. Keith Preston, The Liberators
So the last date slides into the bracket,
That will appear in all future anthologies –
And in quiet Cornwall and in London’s ghastly racket
We are now Betjemanless. Gavin Ewart, 1916-95, In Memoriam, Sir John Betjeman
For a while after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming. F Scott Fitzgerald
Painting is silent poetry; poetry is eloquent painting. Simonides, Greek poet
For poetry enlightens us in a different way from science; it speaks directly to our feelings and imagination. The findings of poetry are no more and no less true than science. Cecil Day-Lewis, 1904-72
In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was due to the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. T S Eliot, Selected Essays
Poets in our civilisation, as it exists at present, must be difficult. ibid.
To me ... [The Waste Land] was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling. T S Eliot, The Waste Land epigraph
As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum. Jean Giraudoux, 1882-1944, French dramatist
The source of all my bliss, and all my woe,
That found’st me poor at first, and keep’st me so. Oliver Goldsmith, re poetry
Say, Britain could you ever boast,–
Three poets in an age at most?
Our chilling climate hardly brears
A sprig of bays in fifty years. Jonathan Swift, On Poetry