Popular quotes about Poets! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.
Robert HassSure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not poets, but the poets those.
John DenhamI'm about fifty years behind as far as my preferences go and I must say that the poets who excite me most are the Americans. There are very few contemporary English poets that I admire.
Sylvia PlathIn general, I find that poets spend a lot of time thinking about themselves, and not a lot of time thinking about other poets, or other poetry. Unless they think about how it affects them, or how it could impact them.
Victoria ChangYoung poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Mason CooleyIt will be hard James but you come from sturdy peasant stock men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity You come from a long line of great poets some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said "The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you James and Godspeed.
James A. BaldwinWithout poets, without artists... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.
Guillaume ApollinaireYou have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.
Adrienne RichMalcolm X is a person who has inspired - he has been the muse of several generations of black cultural workers, artists, poets, playwrights.
Manning MarableTill now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.
John Crowe RansomEveryone is a poet at 16, but how many are poets at 50? Generally, people seem to get more conservative as they age, but in my case, I seem to have gotten more radical.
Fidel CastroThe great religions are the ships, Poets the life boats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard.
HafezI feel that women of my kind are a profound mistake. There have been few women poets of distinction, and, if we count only the suicides of Sappho, Lawrence Hope and Charlotte Mew, their despair rate has been very high.
Anna WickhamMary Mackey joins other visionary poets of dpaysement . . . recovering a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forr, and death. The lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home.
Dennis NurkseDespite wanting to work in publishing, I was a publisher's worst nightmare: I rarely bought new books. So my goal was to publish the kind of books I would buy, and read. My reading habits have changed since starting the press. The only other "goal", per say, is to continue to experiment. I don't want the press to ever fall into a formula, or to be pigeonholed - "They do great reissues of modernist poets!" - I want to keep pushing, exploring the kind of title we can get away with. And working with authors who challenge the way I think about writing, editing and reading.
Andrew LatimerMusicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization.
Abraham MaslowI know that in some ways I operate from a kind of antiquated interest in imagery, while many contemporary poets are not so interested in imagery. I think part of it is my training, and just my visual sense of things.
Martha Ronkand I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the whole thing is so ridiculous that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the poets ... are interesting?
Charles BukowskiThe Rising was mainly a piece of streat theatre designed by poets for dramatic effect. For better or worse, it became part of the founding myth which states need - but which they should move on from after a time. Major John MacBride, in a cameo performance in which he left Jacobs Mill, as he had entered it, immaculately dressed down to the white spats, told his colleagues Next time lads, don't shut yourself up behind four walls. It was good advice.
Maurice HayesModesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
Miguel de CervantesOne of the most intuitive nature writers of our recently past century, Peter Matthiessen, lends a poets voice to the desperate effort to save the tiger.
Ron FranscellI once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.
Eavan BolandAnd some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.
Norman MacCaigI thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified; We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
William WordsworthAlmost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.
Albert PikeI have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.
Abraham LincolnThe way our big cities change sucks. The beauty of cities was that they were edgy, sometimes even a little dangerous. Artists, poets, and activists could come and unify and create different kinds of scenes. Not just fashion scenes, scenes that were politically active. Big cities are getting so high-end oriented, business corporate fashion, fashion not in an artistic sense but in a corporate sense. For me that edgy beauty of cities is lost, wherever you go.
Patti SmithWine has been with us since the beginning of civilization. It is the temperate, civilized, sacred, romantic mealtime beverage recommended in the Bible. Wine has been praised for centuries by statesmen, philosophers, poets, and scholars. Wine in moderation is an integral part of our culture, heritage and gracious way of life.
Robert MondaviNot till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination"-above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." shall we have it.
Marianne MooreMany of the poets I most admire have a way of embodying their peculiar obsessions via landscape that can sometimes seem magical.
Anna JourneyHip-hop is getting to the point now where they are going to start sounding like Al Jarreau or Bobby McFerrin or some of the other poets. Some of the better rappers can rap real fast without even melodies. It'll get to that same point.
George ClintonA poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.
Richard P. FeynmanWhen I hear Khmer poets, when they recite their poems, I know what they're talking about, I get it right away.
Chath PiersathIt is as if the soul of the continent is weeping. Why does it weep? It weeps for the bones of the buffalo. It weeps for magic that has been forgotten. It weeps for the decline of poets.It weepsfor the black people who think like white people.It weepsfor the Indians who think like settlers.It weepsfor the children who think like adults.It weepsfor the free who think like prisoners.Most of all, it weepsfor the cowgirls who think like cowboys.
Tom RobbinsWhat I might do is watch Mrs Doubtfire. Or Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting and I might be nice to people, mindful today how fragile we all are, how delicate we are, even when fizzing with divine madness that seems like it will never expire.
Russell BrandMost poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did.
Robert Lowell