Top 472 Poetry Quotes

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

I'm a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I'd rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

I think of myself as an ambassador of the arts. In my heart of hearts, I know the world would by a more peaceful, tender place if we were more moved by the poetry around us.

What has always attracted me in life is poetry. Any genre can have poetry. For me, poetry contains truth.

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose.

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.