Tag: Great Quotes About Poetry

10 Great Quotes About Poets, Poetry, & Writing by Poets That I Either Personally Know, Interviewed, or Corresponded With…

~ Paul Szlosek ~ 4 Comments
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“I admire poets who are ambitious. I don’t mean ambitious in a careerist or entrepreneurial sense; I mean that they are always trying to get at something deeper, bigger, more true, in terms of craft and content. You can’t always swing for the fences, but I gravitate to those poets who try to take on in some way the big questions about what it means to be human, and try to develop or expand the ways poems can be up to the task.”

— Jonathan Andersen

“Poetry exists because life needs some explanation.”

— Ron Whittle 

“Try not to edit as you write. Allow yourself to write badly and then, allow yourself to write better. Write with joy and energy and not to publish but to practice—the publishing will come. It can’t be rushed. You are an artist and creating art takes time and mastery. All poets are practicing to become better at their craft.”

— Eileen Cleary

“Revision is the primary process [of writing poetry]. Occasionally a line strikes like a bolt of lightning that you rush to capture, but everything around that is a process of revision. Finished is a relative term; most of my poems are not finished until they’ve gone through a series of rewrites. Even the placement of a comma—or lack thereof—can influence meaning, rhythm, mood.”

— Curt Curtin

“Poetry is the sharing of significant, valuable, intense human experience.”

— James R. Scrimgeour

“You need to write a lot and to suspend your ‘inner critic’ to become a better writer. I know this is easier said than done, but struggle to do it. You need to write a lot of lousy poems or stories to learn to write better ones. This is true for all poets and writers.”

— Howard Kogan

“Poetry for me is a still frame, a snapshot of life. It is a collection of words that has the power to pull its reader into the moment it describes and declares a connection.”

— Kate Gregoire 

“Words are for everyone. Writing is a form of self-expression. You do not have to be published to be a writer. You are a writer if you write.”

— Diane Puterbaugh

“For me, the poem teaches us how to recognize these things, that mysterious and patient presence that gently persuades us to create something from nothing.”

—Sandy Monfredo 

“Writing for me is a new living. I want the readers to feel like they have been there, they know this feeling/emotion I am talking about. I want my poetry to take them to the place I have been to, to the sea, to the heart of any and all that matters, to see it, to taste it, and belong to it.”

— Padmaja Battani

10 More Great Quotes About Poets, Poetry, and Writing by Denise Duhamel

~ Paul Szlosek ~ 12 Comments

“My job as a poet is to say what is too hard to say in everyday conversation and to try to say it as beautifully and urgently as I can.”

“I think our society is set up as so anti-poetry. Corporations, having to make a living – Having to make a living is really the hardest – I mean, that’s really anti-poetry, or the enemy of poetry.”

“The joy of writing poetry and the freedom of writing poetry is that no one wants it, so that you can write whatever you want. You know, Coke or Pfizer is not going to say, well, we have to censor that part. The joy is you can do anything you want because so few people are “listening”. And then that is also the inherent sadness of poetry, that you have tiny audiences and are marginalized. But I think there’s a freedom to writing poetry that’s really great, that it’s not a commodity.”

“I love the intensity of short poems, and, for me, these are the hardest to write. They don’t come naturally to me as I am a chatterbox, in poetry and in real life.”

“Poetry is a place where words are there to help people live, to say something sublime. Poets aren’t selling anything, not even their books really, as you can hear people read poems for free on Vimeo or YouTube.”

“I am a big proponent of “freewriting” and I use either a journal or my laptop to “free write” every day for at least twenty minutes. Some days are purely awful and some are just rants about politics. As you can imagine, there are a lot of those these days. I don’t judge myself though as I go along and sometimes it takes me a month or more before I even go back and reread anything I’ve written. Then I highlight what might be useful for poems—lines or images—and sometimes around day 12 there is just an almost finished poem and the next day is gibberish or wordplay exercises. When I have long stretches of time to sit down and write, I always have my freewriting to get me going so I don’t have to start with a blank page.”

“I almost always come up with my titles after the poems are written. I am a fan of long titles and provocative titles and the occasional exclamation point.”

“I started wanting desperately to say something, to make a point, to be heard – and I still feel that way. Free verse served me best when I embarked on poetry.”

“I don’t think it’s important that all poetry is plainspoken and I think there is definitely room for the elliptical and experimental in poetry. But, for me, clarity and accessibility are my goals; I really want to communicate feelings, even political ideas. My project is to write a poetry that can be understood by anyone who picks up my book.”

“Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.”

—Denise Duhamel

10 Great Quotes About Poetry by Carl Sandburg

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“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.”

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.”

“Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.”

“Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.”

“Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.”

“Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.”

“And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers go running back to dust and mist.”

“Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”

“I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself.”

“Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.”

– Carl Sandburg