Quotes About Expression

Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

I have tried to remember throughout that poetry is made by flesh-and-blood human beings. It is a bloody art. It lives on a human scale and thrives when it is passed from hand to hand.

Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

When anger and sorrow overflow, sometimes it becomes poetry.

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".

My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That's why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.

Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it.

Poetry, is the insulation that lies between the inner walls of the mind.

Democritus maintains that there can be no great poet without a spite of madness.

One can be well-bred and write bad poetry

Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

Happy World Poetry Day: 'The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

Poetry is always close kin to the impossible, isn't it?

Indignation leads to the making of poetry. [Lat., Facit indignatio versum.]

Can poetry be a form of social change? I don't know the answer to that. I do think art can have a social impact even if it may be difficult to see the effects of that impact, to assess or measure it.

Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.

I write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan.

Poetry, like dreams, will eventually break through every person's consciousness, even the tightest iconoclast's.