Poetry Quotes

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion.
-- Dead Poets Society

A poem . . . begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. . . . It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.
-- Robert Frost (1874–1963), U.S. poet

All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
-- William Wordsworth (1770–1850), English poet

He who draws noble delights from the sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
-- George Sand (1804–76), French novelist

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a “suspension of belief.” A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.
-- W. H. Auden (1907–73), Anglo-American poet

Only poetry inspires poetry.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher

Poetry is indispensable— if I only knew what for.
-- Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), French author, filmmaker

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
-- T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American poet, critic

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.
-- Allen Ginsberg (1926–97), U.S. poet

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
-- Robert Frost (1874–1963), U.S. poet