quotations about poetry
It's a perverse thing to be, or become, a poet, and always has been, given how starkly marginal a concern, relative to the larger culture, poetry is. Yet because of this, the stakes are incredibly high. There's no money in it, no fame, little chance of "relevancy." But there is glory.
COLIN BARRETT
"This Week in Fiction: Colin Barrett on Anhedonia and Writing Poetry", The New Yorker, April 11, 2016
How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
The New York Times, May 12, 1985
The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Essays in Criticism, Second Series