Quotes about poetry
150 quotes from 90 people
Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening.
Camille Pagliaborn 1947Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 624
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892“To Virgil”, st. 3 (1882)Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Journal (26 January 1840)Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822A Defence of Poetry (1821)Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Julian and Maddalo (1819), l. 543- Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822A Defence of Poetry (1821)
L. P. Jacks1860–1955The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849The Philosophy of Composition (1846), p.122 Line 17
Edith Sitwell1887–1964“Some Notes on My Poetry”. Collected Poems (1957)
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896), No. XIVProse — it might be speculated — is discourse; poetry ellipsis.
Joyce Carol Oatesborn 1938“‘Soul at the White Heat’: The Romance of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry,” (Woman) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (1988)Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.
Robert Frost1874–1963The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.Music is the universal language of mankind — poetry their universal pastime and delight.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Outre-Mer (1835).Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
Philip James Bailey1816–1902Festus (1839), Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
