One good way to start writing poetry is to read all kinds of poetry: not just in order to imitate but to fill up your head with it, to absorb it, to make poetry an essential part of how you view the world.
Poetry is very crafted. You can't have too many words. It needs compression. It has to be spare, just the right number of words.
Poetry is important. No less than science, it seeks a hold upon reality, and the closeness of its approach is the test of its success.
Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.
the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?
Alex loved books. He was the one who first introduced me to poetry. That's another reason I can't read anymore.
A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.
Poetry cannot be defined, only experienced
my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.
It's not easy to define poetry.
For poetry, more than any other art, except music, has a compelling hold upon the spiritual side of life.
Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason.
This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.
The first night Stephen and I slept together, he whispered numbers into my ear: long, high numbers -- distances between planets, seconds in a life. He spoke as if they were poetry, and they became poetry. Later, when he fell asleep, I leaned over him and watched, trying to picture a mathematician's dreams. I concluded that Stephen must dream in abstract, cool designs like Mondrian paintings.
The whole point of writing poetry or fiction is that you get to agonize over whatever it is you want to say, and you finally say it, and you get it as perfect as you can make it. Then you're forced to babble freestyle.
That's one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop, as it were.
Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.
Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip-hop is storytelling and poetry as well.
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
What is poetry? The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.