Quotes About Expression

Sometimes only poetry can say it. I think there's just this deeper language, and away of putting your world back together again and breaking through barriers.

Language, thought, analysis, art, dance, poetry, mythmaking: these are the things that point the way toward the realm of the eschaton.

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.

For me, poetry has no point in existing if it's not to be a prompt or aid to political and ethical change.

The truest poetry is the most feigning.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.

I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.

Public toilets have a duty to be accessible, poetry does not.

For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.

I used to do poetry and write stories and stuff - I never really had anybody standing over my shoulder, like, "What did you write? Let me hear it." I hate that type of stuff.

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.

A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you've got to burn away all the peripherals.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

You 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.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

Poetry is not a luxury.

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.