Good Poetry Quotes

Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream - they go together. ~ Nikki Giovanni

To be under occupation, to be under siege, is not a good inspiration for poetry. ~ Mahmoud Darwish

Poetry is something I love to do. Good poetry has an amazing ability to be communicative before it's even understood. I get emotional just from the beauty of words. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

Heartache makes
for good poetry,
heartburn
not so much. ~ S. Tarr

I'm not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry, but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thing well. ~ Andrew Motion

Everyone sort of sees his own life and times as being ephemeral. One thinks that everything good or important that happened, happened in the past. But I think that seeing scenes that you are used to, but with the heightening effects of poetry, perhaps makes you value your life and times more than you might otherwise do. ~ Vikram Seth

Good poets have written in order to describe something or to preach something - with their eye on the object or the end. The essence of the poetry does not lie in the thing described or in the message imparted but in the resulting concrete unity, the poem. ~ Louis MacNeice

In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry. ~ Bertrand Russell

Poets are political, they have to be reflections of their times [because] they're living in their times. Poetry is political in that it's standing in opposition to fascism. Good poetry asks a bunch of questions and asks the audience to interact with themselves or see themselves in it; maybe you like it or you don't like it. But the fascist sort of stuff plays on your fears and tells you to jump on the party line and gives some simple excuses - blame this person. ~ John Cusack

The poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value as symbols; that Nature is the immense shadow of man. A man's action is only a picture-book of his creed. He does after what he believes. Your condition, your employment, is the fable of you. The world is thoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body and mind of man, and taken his mould and form. Indeed, good poetry is always personification, and heightens every species of force in nature by giving it a human volition. We are advertised that there is nothing to which man is not related; that everything is convertible into every other. The staff in his hand is the radius vector of the sun. The chemistry of this is the chemistry of that. Whatever one act we do, whatever one thing we learn, we are doing and learning all things, - marching in the direction of universal power. Every healthy mind is a true Alexander or Sesostris, building a universal monarchy. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't think it's always good to read lots of poetry. ~ Amber Tamblyn

For a lot of people, well-meaning teaching has made poetry seem arcane, difficult, a kind of brown-knotting medicine that might be good for you but doesn't taste so good. So I tried to make a collection of poetry that would be fun. And that would bring out poetry as an art, rather than the challenge to say smart things. ~ Robert Pinsky

Good poetry reveals the beauty of joy and tragedy. ~ Debasish Mridha

Bad, quirky poetry might be better than some of the good stuff, because it really comes from the heart. ~ Cheryl Hines

It's as serious as anyone ever gets, you know. It's just words. It's just good poetry. ~ Paul McCartney

When you write a song it's sometimes in a desperate moment whn you can't really articulate it. What I love about lyrics is what T.S. Eliot said: 'Good poetry is felt before it is heard.' I'm a believer in that. It's those moments when you sit yourself down, and talk to yourself in the mirror. ~ Marcus Mumford

I think it was T.S. Eliot who talked about good poetry being felt before it's understood. I believe that. There are some bands where I love their lyrics but I don't have a clue what they're on about. ~ Marcus Mumford

My idea of good poetry is any dog doing anything. ~ J. Boone

Poetry from the bottom up is an act of selection: you kind of feel your way through the crowds of poems. The good ones came forward a long time ago, and the bad ones fell away. ~ Eileen Myles

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Sometimes I think people think poetry must be filled with flowery language, thesaurus-driven vocabulary or the dreaded "purple prose," which is often prevalent in my genre...But oftentimes the best poetry isn't difficult to understand at all. It's the juxtaposition of the words. The line breaks. The enjambs. The shape of the poem. Or the double meanings the positioning of the words make the reader feel or think or do. ~ R.B. O'Brien

Boy, this is your lucky day!" She clapped her hands. "You found yourself a librarian! I can help wit the figuring-out thing and point you toward some good poetry while I'm at it. It's what I do. ~ Joe Hill

PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy. ~ Diane Wakoski

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems. ~ Margaret Atwood

The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music. ~ John Drinkwater

Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies. ~ June Jordan

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write. ~ Philip Larkin

The Difference Between Good Poetry and Good Prose
The prose writer deletes all errors,
irrelevancies, discontinuities and vagueness.
The poet knows which of these to keep,
to embellish upon, to follow through with
and make even more ambiguous. ~ Beryl Dov

Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative. ~ Matthew Arnold

Good poetry is like effective prayer, it feeds the human spirit, it nourishes, it puts us in touch with forces far greater than ourselves ~ Lorna Goodison

Poetry, especially traditional Iranian poetry, is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously. ~ Asghar Farhadi

All good poetry is forged slowly and patiently, link by link, with sweat and blood and tears. ~ Lord Alfred Douglas

He didn't disagree with me, but he seemed to feel that I have a perfection complex of some kind. Much talk from him, and quite intelligent, on the virtues of living the imperfect life, of accepting one's own and others' weaknesses. I agree with him, but only in theory. I'll champion indiscrimination till doomsday, on the grounds that it leads to health and a kind of very real, enviable happiness. Followed purely it's the way of the Tao, and undoubtedly the highest way. But for a discriminating man to achieve this, it would mean that he would have to dispossess himself of poetry, go beyond poetry. That is, he couldn't possibly learn or drive himself to like bad poetry in the abstract, let alone equate it with good poetry. He would have to drop poetry altogether. I said it would be no easy thing to do. Dr Sims said I was putting it too stringently – putting it, he said, as only a perfectionist would. ~ J.D. Salinger

The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme. ~ James Fenton

Re: Robert Montgomery's Poems His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words in Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when disposed in certain orders and combinations,have made, and will make again, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

I did a weird thing when I was about 24. For four years I had written quite a lot of poetry, and I started reading through it and thought some of it was really good. So I burnt it all. ~ Cliff Curtis

In writing, I want to be remembered for telling good stories in beautiful and powerful language, using the poetry of words to reflect the thematic concerns of compelling stories. ~ Kim Edwards

Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom and complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later. ~ Richard Hell

The banner of the project is 'Casa de Colores.' Under that banner, I'm going to invite people to do a lot of good things. Perhaps working in groups, working on poetry. ~ Juan Felipe Herrera

A lot of people feel that the realm of poetry and the realm of the lyric is personal feeling and should rise above politics, which, in fact, good poetry has never done. ~ Claudia Rankine

Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see good poetry in advertising. ~ David Whyte

I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface; they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart. ~ Judy Collins

The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is ... political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act. ~ Amiri Baraka

Poetry is partly sympathy, don't you think? If it's any good, it gets people to think about others' points of view. ~ Edwin Morgan

I believe it's impossible to write good poetry without reading. Reading poetry goes straight to my psyche and makes me want to write. I meet the muse in the poems of others and invite her to my poems. I see over and over again, in different ways, what is possible, how the perimeters of poetry are expanding and making way for new forms. ~ Denise Duhamel

It's always good to show that poetry isn't the little depressed lyric people believe it to be, that it's something bigger. ~ John Fuller

If I can write just one poem that will turn the minds of a few to a more decent outlook...what does it matter if I compose a bad line or lose my reputation as a craftsman?...I used to think it very important to write only good poetry. Over and over I worked it to make it as flawless as I could. What does it matter now, when men are dying for their hopes and their ideals? If I live or die as a poet it won't matter, but anyone who believes in democracy and freedom and love and culture and peace ought to be busy now. He cannot wait for the tomorrow. ~ Nancy Milford

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether, the trick they miss is that being called this thing, with the weight of tradition behind it, and with the association of the Royal family, does allow you to have conversations and to open doors, and wallets, for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow. ~ Andrew Motion

Do not fear to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday experiment, but above all, good poetry in all kinds,
epic, tragedy, lyric. If we can touch the imagination, we serve them; they will never forget it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events. ~ Diane Wakoski

There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas. ~ Robert Adamson

Lyrical poetry is not a big part of most people's lives. Twitter now becomes an interesting way of getting cared for language into people's space. Because there is something deep inside of us that responds to cared for language, whether it's literary, poetry, or really good lyrics in a song. ~ Teju Cole

The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry. ~ Robert Morgan

Like Mom, Zoe thought–like Mom used to. And that's where they differed, for Zoe wrote quiet poetry suffused with twilight and questions. It's not even good poetry, she thought. I don't have talent, it's her. I should be the one ill; she has so much to offer, so much life. "You're a dark one," her mother said sometimes with amused wonder. "You're a mystery. ~ Annette Curtis Klause

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help. ~ Thom Gunn

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such. ~ Peter Davison

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world. ~ Earl Sweatshirt

The gap between verse and poetry is enormous. Between good poetry and good prose the gap is much narrower ~ Michael Longley

Life is about making mistakes. If you don't take chances, blindfolded and frightened as you are, you're not really living, are you? Heartache makes you stronger. Misery is the stuff of good poetry. You're denying yourself much more than the bad things in life by listening to Zita's fortunes. ~ Kimberly Karalius

Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others. ~ Bryant McGill

The theoretical physicist Richard Feynman was such a lauded lecturer in large part because, like Hui Tzu, he was skilled in finding the right analogies to illustrate his explanations of extremely abstract-and extremely difficult-concepts. He once compared a drop of water magnified 2,000 times to "a kind of teeming...like a crowd at a football game as seen from a very great distance." That description has all the precision of good physics and good poetry. ~ James Geary

How much money you get, depends on lots of extraneous things. It depends on how good you are at turning poetry into a marketable product, which is something it was never supposed to be. That's why many people suppose that the better the poet you are the lower your income should be, and that's probably true. ~ Robert Bringhurst

Italian is the language of song. German is good for philosophy and English for poetry. French is best at precision; it has a rigour to it. ~ Maurice Druon

I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis. I am not an enemy of the Catholics, as I am not an enemy of the tuberculars, the myopic or the paralytics; you cannot be an enemy of the sick, only their good friend in order to help them cure themselves. ~ Diego Rivera

Good design means as little design as possible. ~ Dieter Rams

It's good to have a title that's not just one word. If you're gonna title it, you might as well try and say something. ~ Damien Hirst

Forgiveness is all about taking care of you, not the person you need to forgive. It's about putting your desire to feel good before your desire to be right. It's about taking responsibility for your own happiness instead of pretending it's in somebody else's hands. It's about owning your power by giving all your anger, resentment, and hurt the heave-ho. ~ Jen Sincero

The word felt good, liberating. So, I repeat it. "Fuck." Then, again. And again. Because it made me someone else, someone normal and happy, someone who used words like that, like St. John. I repeated it, over and over until she walked away, wounded. Then, I was glad. And still, I kept repeating it, because that was the only thing that kept me from crying. ~ Alex Flinn

A good education is a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, because each enrich the other. The accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient without action ~ Howard Zinn

Predictions are just good guesses or stories for the gullible. ~ Wynne Channing

Good or Bad?
Good.
That's what I thought ~ Stephenie Meyer

Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God. ~ Lord Acton

The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can. ~ Socrates

You have to think about good storytelling and characters first. Then hopefully, the rest of that stuff will follow, some more than others. But if you don't have a good film and strong characters, then you don't have anything down the road. ~ Pete Docter

To use good things to our own ends is always a false religion ~ Richard J. Foster

In November, some birds move away and some birds stay. The air is full of good-byes and well-wishes. The birds who are leaving look very serious. No silly spring chirping now. They have long journeys and must watch where they are going. The staying birds are serious, too, for cold times lie ahead. Hard times. All berries will be treasures. ~ Cynthia Rylant

I consider I've had a good day when, among the lines I've written, I've produced from my innermost core what I call 'the appearance of the pearl.' That could refer to a discovery, a sense of harmonious cohesiveness, or something like that. ~ Ismail Kadare

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior. ~ Abraham Maslow

I don't spend a lot of time online. My mother's really good at picking out if she sees a really great review, and she'll forward it to me. She's like my little Internet filter. It's always nice to see something going up; if I want to find something on Nathan Fillion, I do know where to look, but I've got a nice little delivery system in my mom. ~ Nathan Fillion

Troubles are usually the brooms and shovels that smooth the road to a good man's fortune. ~ Saint Basil

It is probably a very good thing for a boy to learn to live with enmity, as opposed to an atmosphere of love and affection, as it hardens him and gives him a taste of what he is going to run into later in life. ~ Preston Sturges

So it would be a good thing for Chinese parents to instill enthusiasm among their kids for football. It's a great game, not only regarding the emotions behind it, but it's also a game for young people to gain experience of working in a bigger group and work to achieve goals. ~ Berti Vogts

Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy. ~ Henry Beston

Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than to be in bad company ~ Booker T. Washington

Her voice gave me the impression she was surprised I was capable of good ideas. It was the kind of tone city people used down here when they ordered a large coffee and called it a "Venti Americano." I milled this over, plus her earlier words about backwoods Appalachia, and came to the conclusion she thought I was a hick.

Now, I admit, we have our fair share of hicks in Green Valley, Tennessee. We have hicks, hillbillies, rednecks, bumpkins, and the occasional reclusive yokel. But I was none of these things ~ Penny Reid

Paint stuff and make jam. You`re good at doing that. ~ Ed Sheeran

I would rather live out on the desert alone, like an old prospector. All I needed was a small water source. What was the point in such loneliness among people. At least if you were by yourself, you had a good reason to be lonely. ~ Janet Fitch

You deserve to be happy, Dylan."
"So do you."
"Good thing we've got each other then," she answers, tucking herself into my shoulder, and wrapping her arm around my back. ~ Dannielle Wicks

They
the books I mean, not the ladies of Technical Services, though maybe those ladies too
might have dreamed of a different life in a private home, beloved and displayed and well dressed and only occasionally, dreamily read, but they belonged to the city now and had to work for the common good. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so that it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is the essence of it. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

In primitive society, where uniformity of occupation is the rule, and the distribution of the community into various classes of workers has hardly begun, every man is more or less his own magician; he practices charms and incantations for his own good and the injury of his enemies. ~ James G. Frazer

I glanced over his shoulder to get a look at his latest drawing. A wolf and a coyote stood side by side beneath a dual sky, sun and moon shining at the same time.

"They're brothers," Rafael said. He laid his charcoal on the grass. "Wolf is wise and judicious. Coyote's a trickster. They're the two faces of God. Everything in the world is dual-natured. Even God isn't all good or all bad."

He told me about how the sun used to be married to the moon before they quarreled and parted ways, leaving the sun to rule the world at day and the moon at night. He told me how the Wolf had sewn us all out of seeds and put us in a cloth bag to keep us safe, but the Coyote had clawed the bag open and everyone had spilled out, landing and taking root in different parts of the world. He told me about the girl with Two Faces, one half of her face devastatingly beautiful, the other half impossibly ugly, and the man who lover her anyway. He told me about the days when death lacked permanence and ten different generations lived together beneath the same stars.

He talked, as he always talked, without any real purpose, clearing his head of the cluttering thoughts that had gathered and built up until he could pour them into me. ~ Rose Christo

If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet. For man, we are told, lives not by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And having discovered the mouth of God to be the mind of man, a mind which lives on Words or inner talking, we should feed into our minds only loving, noble thoughts. For with Words or inner talking we build our world. Let love's lordly hand raise your hunger and thirst to all that is noble and of good report, and let your mind starve e'er you raise your hand to a cup love did not fill or a bowl love did not bless. That you may never again have to say, What have I said? What have I done, O All Powerful Human Word? ~ Neville Goddard

I put things on shuffle a lot, which is probably why I don't have a very good idea of genre. ~ Oliver Sim

Prayer is asking for rain. Faith is carrying an umbrella. Faith is the inner sense of knowing that with divine order working on your side, all things will come together for your good. Faith is knowing that there is a divine plan and purpose for everything in life ~ Iyanla Vanzant

I would honor the man who give to his country a good newspaper. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

Inside, the midwife was trying to get Socorro to open her mouth wide and let the pain come out. "Open your mouth," said Angelina, massaging Socorro's neck and shoulders, "and let out what you feel. Don't keep it in, querida, let it out."
Socorro cried softly at first, but little by little she loosened up and she began to let out long, ear-piercing screams.
"Good," said the midwife, "now breathe deeply, deeply, and then cry out again, letting all the pain go out of your body. ~ Victor Villasenor

Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent. ~ Steve Martin