#poetry

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. ↗

— Jean Giraudoux

#eternal #example #flower #life #poetry

I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why. ↗

— Diane Wakoski

#ask #criteria #critical #everybody #good

I'm perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it's all women. I always think it's kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry. ↗

— Diane Wakoski

#audience #happy #i #i always #i think

It's something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you're too awkward to do it. ↗

— John Cusack

#because #better #could #done #else

Poetry is composing for the breath. ↗

— Peter Davison

#composing #poetry

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow’d to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair’d the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent. ↗

— George Gordon Byron

#poetry #beauty

I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that. ↗

— James Dickey

#because #claim #craft #does #done

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry. ↗

— Emily Dickinson

#away #book #lands #like #nor

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose. ↗

— Walter Savage Landor

#certain #deal #great #great deal #hand

A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being. ↗

— John Drinkwater

#being #deceived #differing #divisions #each