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Quotes about poetry

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A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. Forster1879–1970Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), “Anonymity: An Enquiry”
- Truth & Lies
He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.
John Milton1608–1674Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
- Writing
It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Misalliance (1910), Preface
- Business
The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
Herbert Spencer1820–1903“What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?” (1859), in Education (1861), Ch. 1
- Science
I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.
Arthur Rimbaud1854–1891Letter to Paul Demeny (May 15, 1871)
The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself.
John Keats1795–1821To James Hessey (9 October 1818)
- Genius
Poetry Fetter’d. Fetters the Human Race. Nations are Destroy’d, or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry, Painting, and Music are Destroy’d or Flourish!
William Blake1757–1827Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820)
- Art
- Music
Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne1804–1864The Marble Faun (1860), Chapter XLI: Snowdrops and Maidenly Delights
- Art
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
W. H. Auden1907–1973The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962)
- Politics
Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)”
- History
Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
Jorge Luis Borges1899–1986“The Divine Comedy”, lecture (1977), in Seven Nights (1980)
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Richard Feynman1918–1988The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. I (1963), lecture 3, “The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences”, p. 3-6
- Science
I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Journal (27 June 1839)
- Freedom
Poetry comes fine-spun from a mind at ease.
Ovid43 BC–AD 17Tristia, Book I, poem 1, line 39
Real warriors like William Burroughs or Leonard Cohen or Wallace Stevens examine the hollow as well as anybody; they get in there, look far into the dark, and yet come out with poetry.
KKKen Kesey1935–2001The Paris Review interview (1994)
- Courage