Quotations about Poems

A friend is a poem. ~ Iranian Proverbs

Poetry moves heaven and earth. ~ Japanese Proverbs

A poem round and perfect as a star. ~ Alexander Smith

When you are very angry, don’t go to a lawyer; when you are very hungry, don’t be a poet. ~ Chinese Proverb

Quotations about Poems

I am looking for a poem that says Everything so I don’t have to write anymore. ~ Tukaram

For what is a poem, but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding. It is the deepest part of autobiography.~ Robert Penn Warren

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. ~ E.M. Forster

The moment of change is the only poem.~ Adrienne Rich

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my “poems” are competing. ~ EE Cummings

If the author had said “Let us put on appropriate galoshes,” there could, of course, have been no poem. ~ Author Unknown

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.~ Paul Valery

The poem is the point at which our strength gave out. ~ Richard Rosen

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

One must forgive a large self-consciousness to a great poet. We cannot deny a certain Godlikeness to one who creates men from his brain. ~ Marie Dubsky

A poet carrying a thought from his mind into expression is like a child bearing a bucket brimming with water from the well to the house,—part of the contents is spilled. ~ Austin O’Malley

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo

The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty the less? or a sense the more? ~ A.W. Hare and J.C. Hare

…his eternally restless, eternally searching spirit that strives toward the heights on the wings of speculative thought. Deep inspiration and exalted feeling permeate every verse of the poem… ~ Israel Zinberg

The greatest poem is not that which is most skillfully constructed, but that in which there is the most poetry.~ Schefer

When the Divine Artist would produce a poem, He plants a germ of it in a human soul, and out of that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rose-tree the rose. ~ James Abram Garfield

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man. ~ Thomas Carlyle

If you know what you are going to write when you’re writing a poem, it’s going to be average. ~ Derek Walcott

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.~ James Fenton

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.~ Diane Ackerman

Let those who would write heroic poems make their life an heroic poem.~ John Milton

The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. ~ Dylan Thomas

No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.~ Marguerite Duras

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. ~ Robert Frost

A good poem, like a bouquet of choice flowers, is the blending of exquisite coloring and sweet perfume, to the delight of both head and heart. ~ James Lendall Basford

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.~ Robert Frost

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

Compression of poetry is so great I often explode. Out of the house to walk off a poem. ~ William Corbett

It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.~ Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

A translation of a poem is like a plastercast of a statue or a photograph of a painting; and the better the translation the poorer the original poem. ~ Austin O’Malley

Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite.~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Poems: words with smooth edges. ~ Author Unknown

Poetry is the sister of Sorrow. Every man that suffers and weeps is a poet; every tear is a verse, and every heart a poem. ~ Marc Andre

A perfect poem is impossible. Once it has been written, the world would end.~ Robert Graves

A picture is a poem without words.~ Horace

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers. ~ Horace, Satires

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A poem sings with a bad accent in any language not its own. ~ Austin O’Malley

Any method is good that produces a good poem. ~ Helen Smith Bevington

Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue! ~ Jean Cocteau

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

Every old poem is sacred.~ Horace

My chief aim is to make a poem. You make it for yourself firstly, and then if other people want to join in then there we are. ~ R.S. Thomas

It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance. ~ Honore de Balzac

There is often as much poetry between the lines of a poem as in those lines. ~ Alexandre Vinet

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[A poem] begins in delight and ends in wisdom. ~ Robert Frost

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