Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.
Poetry endures when it possesses passionate and primally sincere clarity in the service of articulating universal human concerns.
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
There's a level at which, if you take poetry seriously, the focus it involves... that never goes away.
Writing poetry, which for me was then saying how I felt about this and that, didn't help me to understand the world I lived in.
Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.
Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.
I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.
I think when kids just see well-crafted poetry, it's just obtuse to them. It's hard to relate to.
I do actually dabble in a bit of poetry! And I'm yet to pen a script, but it is something that I've been telling myself I want to do.
When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry.
I used to write stories and poetry, but for some reason I have it in my head that if I'm going to write, I have to write a script.
And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.
The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.
Do-gooders are easily overlooked. We're supposed to be soft, touchy-feely types, who wear Birkenstocks, compost everything, and write poetry by candlelight.
I've been most happy to be an advocate for the kinds of grassroots things that people are doing who care about poetry.
