Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.
Category: poetry
On the one hand poetry is useless. It can’t change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence. It came into the world when humans did. It’s what makes human beings human
Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.
Poetry is perhaps what teaches us to nurture the charming illusion: how to be reborn out of ourselves over and over again, and use words to construct a better world, a fictitious world that enables us to sign a pact for a permanent and comprehensive peace . . . with life
As I write, I create myself again and again.
The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.
My old teacher’s definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.
I read poetry to save time.
In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.
I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.
How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?
Poetry is life distilled.
There’s a reason poets often say, ‘Poetry saved my life,’ for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul’s suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
We are supposed to write poetry to keep the gods alive.
Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
Poetry is the deification of reality.
Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.
A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.