Poetry Quotes of the Day

“The poet doesn't invent. He listens.”—Jean Cocteau

“The poet ... may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.”—Lionel Trilling

“By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.”—Rita Dove
“Poetry amounts to arranging words with the greatest specific gravity in the most effective and externally inevitable sequence.”—Joseph Brodsky

“A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep.”—Salman Rushdie

“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”—Edgar Allan Poe

“The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don't wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait.”—Sonia Sanchez

“Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.”—Christopher Fry

“A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”—Randall Jarell

“When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.”—Niels Bohr