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Poetry Quotes

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""Therefore" is a word the poet must not know."
Andre Gide

"Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure."
A. E. Housman

"Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content."
Alfred de Musset

"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."
Carl Sandburg

"Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them."
Charles Simic

"Always be a poet, even in prose."
Charles Baudelaire

"Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes."
Carl Sandburg

"Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket."
Charles Simic

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance."
Carl Sandburg

"I've written some poetry I don't understand myself."
Carl Sandburg

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment."
Carl Sandburg

"Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away."
Carl Sandburg

"Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo."
Don Marquis

"Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them."
Dennis Gabor

"You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in."
Dylan Thomas

"Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition."
Eli Khamarov

"Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words."
Edgar Allan Poe

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

"A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring."
E. B. White

"He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life."
George Sand

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