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Quotes about poetry

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Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
Robert Frost1874–1963
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965“Philip Massinger”, a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Reflections on the Psalms
Every poem can be considered in two ways⁠—as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963A Preface to Paradise Lost
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert Frost1874–1963The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Robert Frost1874–1963
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Robert Frost1874–1963Letter to Louis Untermeyer (January 1, 1916)
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), Part II
I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.
Bob Dylanborn 1941
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936‘Cheese,’ p. 70
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965“Dante” (1929), in Selected Essays (1932), p. 238
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
Marianne Moore1887–1972
Too many poets delude themselves by thinking that the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in.
Robert Frost1874–1963Interview with with Harvey Breit of The New York Times Book Review. As quoted in the following source: Associated Press (30 January 1963). “Robert Frost Dies at 88
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965