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Poets and Poetry Quotes and Quotations
 A drainless shower of light is poesy; 'tis the supreme of power; 'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.  A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him. If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone. In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all. One of Wordsworth's Lake District neighbours remarked, upon hearing of the poet's death "I suppose his son will carry on the business." Poetry is not a profession, it's a destiny. Poetry is the language of a state of crisis. Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock. Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the gypsies. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences. When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages. I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people. There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either. The essentials of poetry are rhythm, dance and the human voice. Colour, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science. A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring. Most joyful let the Poet be, it is through him that all men see. Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do. The poet is the priest of the invisible. A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times. Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books. For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography. When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again. Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. Poetry is all nouns and verbs. I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose - words in their best order; poetry - the best words in their best order. When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must. The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness. Science is for those who learn; poetry for those who know. Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. The poet's mind is ... a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together. Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry. Poetry is a mug's game. A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or alovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. An art in which the artist by means of rhythm and great sincerity can convey to others the sentiment which he feels about life. Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here. It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully. Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. To have great poets there must be great audiences too. Poets aren't very useful, because they aren't consumeful or very produceful. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment. Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right. Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind. For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose. 
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