Poetry 

1. It is barbarous to write a poem after Auschwitz.
   Theodor Adorno 1903–69 German philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist: I. Buruma Wages of Guilt (1994)
2. So poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history, for while poetry is concerned with universal truth, history treats of particular facts.
   Aristotle 384–322 bc Greek philosopher: Poetics ch. 9, 1451b 5–6
3. Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.
   Matthew Arnold 1822–88 English poet and essayist: Essays in Criticism Second Series (1888) ‘Wordsworth’
4. Poetry makes nothing happen.
   
    
   W. H. Auden 1907–73 English poet: ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ (1940) pt. 2
5. A poet's hope: to be,
   like some valley cheese,
   local, but prized elsewhere.
   
    
   W. H. Auden 1907–73 English poet: ‘Shorts II’ (1976)
6. Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.
   Jeremy Bentham 1748–1832 English philosopher: M. St J. Packe The Life of John Stuart Mill (1954)
7. Some rhyme a neebor's name to lash;
   Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu' cash;
   Some rhyme to court the countra clash,
   An' raise a din;
   For me, an aim I never fash;
   I rhyme for fun.
   
    
   Robert Burns 1759–96 Scottish poet: ‘To J. S[mith]’ (1786)
8. All poets are mad.
   Robert Burton 1577–1640 English clergyman and scholar: The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621–51) ‘Democritus to the Reader’
9. There's nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.
   Paul Celan 1920–70 German poet: letter to relatives, 2 August 1948
10. on the haiku:
    To convey one’s mood in seventeen syllables is very diffic.
    John Cooper Clarke 1949–  English poet: attributed
11. The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
    Jean Cocteau 1889–1963 French dramatist and film director: Le Rappel à l'ordre (1926)
12. That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834 English poet, critic, and philosopher: Biographia Literaria (1817) ch. 14
13. Prose = words in their best order;—poetry = the best words in the best order.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834 English poet, critic, and philosopher: Table Talk (1835) 12 July 1827
14. There is no Frigate like a Book
    To take us Lands away
    Nor any Coursers like a Page
    Of prancing Poetry.
    
     
    Emily Dickinson 1830–86 American poet: ‘A Book (2)’ (1873)
15. If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way.
    Emily Dickinson 1830–86 American poet: letter to T. W. Higginson, 16 August 1870
16. I am two fools, I know,
    For loving, and for saying so
    In whining poetry.
    
     
    John Donne 1572–1631 English poet and divine: Songs and Sonnets ‘The Triple Fool’
17. 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.
    T. S. Eliot 1888–1965 American-born British poet, critic, and dramatist: The Sacred Wood (1920) ‘Tradition and Individual Talent’
18. The great poet, in writing himself, writes his time.
    T. S. Eliot 1888–1965 American-born British poet, critic, and dramatist: Selected Essays (1932) ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’
19. To me…[The Waste Land] was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.
    T. S. Eliot 1888–1965 American-born British poet, critic, and dramatist: The Waste Land (ed. Valerie Eliot, 1971) epigraph
20. Poetry's a mere drug, Sir.
    George Farquhar 1678–1707 Irish dramatist: Love and a Bottle (1698) act 3, sc. 2; see Lowell
21. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
    Gustave Flaubert 1821–80 French novelist: letter to Louise Colet, 14 August 1853
22. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
    Robert Frost 1874–1963 American poet: Collected Poems (1939) ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’
23. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
    Robert Frost 1874–1963 American poet: Elizabeth S. Sergeant Robert Frost (1960) ch. 18
24. I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
    Robert Frost 1874–1963 American poet: Edward Lathem Interviews with Robert Frost (1966)
25. As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.
    Jean Giraudoux 1882–1944 French dramatist: La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (1935) act 2, sc. 4
26. If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.
    Robert Graves 1895–1985 English poet: speech at London School of Economics, 6 December 1963
27. What
    ought a poem be? Answer, a sad
    and angry consolation.
    
     
    Geoffrey Hill 1932–2016 English poet: The Triumph of Love (1999)
28. Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act…The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach.
    A. E. Housman 1859–1936 English poet: lecture at Cambridge, 9 May 1933
29. boswell: Sir, what is poetry?
    johnson: Why Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.
    
    Samuel Johnson 1709–84 English poet, critic, and lexicographer: James Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) 12 April 1776
30. If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
    John Keats 1795–1821 English poet: letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818
31. The notion of expressing sentiments in short lines having similar sounds at their ends seems as remote as mangoes on the moon.
    Philip Larkin 1922–85 English poet: letter to Barbara Pym, 22 January 1975
32. For twenty years I've stared my level best
    To see if evening—any evening —would suggest
    A patient etherized upon a table;
    In vain. I simply wasn't able.
    
     
    on contemporary poetry
    C. S. Lewis 1898–1963 English literary scholar: ‘A Confession’ (1964); see Eliot
33. A poem should not mean
    But be.
    
     
    Archibald MacLeish 1892–1982 American poet and public official: ‘Ars Poetica’ (1926)
34. Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
    Don Marquis 1878–1937 American poet and journalist: E. Anthony O Rare Don Marquis (1962)
35. Most people ignore most poetry
    because
    most poetry ignores most people.
    
     
    Adrian Mitchell 1932–2008 English poet, novelist, and dramatist: Poems (1964)
36. All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.
    Molière 1622–73 French comic dramatist: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1671) act 2, sc. 4
37. I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
    Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.
    
     
    Marianne Moore 1887–1972 American poet: ‘Poetry’ (1935)
38. All a poet can do today is warn.
    Wilfred Owen 1893–1918 English poet: Preface (written 1918) in Poems (1963)
39. Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
    Ezra Pound 1885–1972 American poet: The ABC of Reading (1934) ‘Warning’
40. Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
    Carl Sandburg 1878–1967 American poet: in Atlantic Monthly March 1923 ‘Poetry Considered’
41. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792–1822 English poet: A Defence of Poetry (written 1821); see Johnson
42. Poetry is not the most important thing in life…I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.
    Dylan Thomas 1914–53 Welsh poet: Joan Wyndham Love is Blue (1986) 6 July 1943
43. In this
    most Christian of worlds all poets
    are Jews.
    
     
    Marina Tsvetaeva 1892–1941 Russian poet: ‘Poem of the End’ (1924)
44. A poem is never finished; it's always an accident that puts a stop to it—i.e. gives it to the public.
    often quoted in W. H. Auden' s paraphrase, ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned’
    Paul Valéry 1871–1945 French poet, critic, and man of letters: Littérature (1930)
45. Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
    William Wordsworth 1770–1850 English poet: Lyrical Ballads (2nd ed., 1802) preface
46. I said ‘a line will take us hours maybe;
    Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
    Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.’
    
     
    W. B. Yeats 1865–1939 Irish poet: ‘Adam's Curse’ (1904)
47. We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
    W. B. Yeats 1865–1939 Irish poet: Essays (1924) ‘Anima Hominis’ sect. 5
48. I think poetry should be alive. You should be able to dance it.
    Benjamin Zephaniah 1958–  British poet: in Sunday Times 23 August 1987