I consider poetry my vocation, not my "career. " My career is as a university professor; that's what pays the bills.
If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.
To do a poem justice, explain what makes it unique; to get a poem noticed, explain what makes it typical.
It's just me and my guitar, and the rhythm's from there, and the poetry of life.
Art's effect is due to the tension resulting from the clash of the collocation of elements of two (or more) systems of interpretation. This conflict has the function of breaking down automatism of perception and occurs simultaneously on the many levels of a work of art. . . All levels may carry meaning.
Protest poetry -- could there be consensus poetry?
There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. ‘There it is. ’
When I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you can understand.
You've got to love libraries. You've got to love books. You've got to love poetry. You've got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.
Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.
The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within. . . could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.
I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.
Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were learning to unravel, was poetry.
I was just reading some poetry, and it talked about how things start as one thing and change into another, and I just thought, what a great concept for a song.
I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, they're kindred spirits.
History after all is the true poetry.
We speak of the masculine and the feminine, but they are the wrong labels. It is really more a matter of poetry versus intellectualization.
You have to understand a bit about the poetry of the blues to know where the references are coming from.
Poetry is a satifying of the desire for resemblance.
I think many people love poetry who don't know they love it. People are sometimes afraid of poetry, or they've been introduced to poetry that doesn't speak to them.