#poetry

Poetry is not communication with angels or with the "subconscious." It is communication with the guts, genitals, and five portals of sense. Nothing more. ↗

— Thomas Pynchon

#communication

Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#dreams

Poetry says the things that I can't say. I read a lot, but I never write it. ↗

— Trevor McDonald

#lot #never #poetry #read #say

With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books. ↗

— Peter Abrahams

#born #consciousness #desired #desires #dreams

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things. ↗

— Matthew Arnold

#effective #impressive #mode #most #most beautiful

The world is as it used to be: “All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés sake Than you who are helpless in such matters. “That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them’s a blessed thing, For if it were they’d have to scour Hell’s floor for so much threatening.... “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need). ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#men

Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father, Your mother, your sister, or your brother? I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother. Your friends? Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known. Your country? I do not know in what latitude it lies. Beauty? I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal. Gold? I hate it as you hate God. Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger? I love the clouds the clouds that pass up there Up there the wonderful clouds! ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#beauty

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. ↗

— James Branch Cabell

#being #man #poetry #rebellion

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry. ↗

— John Cage

#i #i am #nothing #poetry #say

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated. ↗

— Lucille Clifton

#celebrated #mistake #more #people #poetry