#poets

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#intelligence #philosophers #poets #sense

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum. ↗

— Jean Giraudoux

#declared #drum #effective #hold #impossible

I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #impossible #literature #literature-quotes #philosophy

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

I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us. ↗

— Helen Dunmore

#days #discussing #i #i have learned #learned

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. ↗

— John Fowles

#ones #poems #poets #simply #who

Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going. ↗

— James Laughlin

#beautiful #beautiful things #belong #book #concrete

I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian. ↗

— James Laughlin

#becomes #friend #i #i think #individual

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping. ↗

— Norman MacCaig

#because #better #boring #drooping #dry

Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth. ↗

— Mohsen Makhmalbaf

#everybody #fell #god #greatest #had