Poetry Quotes:

From PoetMom:

 

Give us at least 10 quotations pertaining to poetry—from 10 different writers and/or poets—that best coincide with your philosophy, vis-à-vis ars poetica. They can be posthumous or otherwise. The order is not important—unless it is to you.

 

 

1)  "Poetry proceeds prose in all cultures and we don't want to be the generation that drops the ball."  Ed Hirsch

 

2)  "Poetry is not just about feelings flowing down your arm and to the page.  You can do that, but just don't ask someone else to read it."  Thomas Lux

 

3)  "Art gives back to you."  Li-Young Lee

 

4)  In a workshop, one student criticized something eccentric another student had tried to do in a poem, Theodore Roethke replied, "You want to be very careful when you criticize something like that, because it may be the hallmark of an emerging style." 

 

5)  "Never be ashamed of the strange" and "Don't be ashamed if you belch when you try to sing."  Theodore Roethke

 

6)  "The good stuff and the bad stuff are all part of the stuff. No good stuff without bad stuff. " Marvin Bell

 

7)  "People think you can't be a poet without being drunk.  Women poets are expected to commit suicide.  Someone once asked me when, not if, I would commit suicide."  Margaret Atwood

 

8)  "I think I developed language skills to deal with threat.  It's the girl thing to do—you know, instead of pulling out a gun."  Barbara Kruger

 

9)  "For me, humor is a way to catch the reader—as I sometimes catch myself—unaware.  Humor opens a poem and invites people in, even people who may not exactly agree with you.  It's a way to avoid being didactic in political poetry."  Denise Duhamel

 

10)  "Art is not a Tupperware party"  Albert Goldbarth