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QUOTES ABOUT POETRY
How others define and explain poetry
down ... lots of quotations here!

First, check out the quotations listed by Kristen O'Connell George on her website ...
then enjoy these:

"In the code language of criticism when a poem is said to be about poetry the word "poetry" is often used to mean: how people construct an intelligibility out of the randomness they experience; how people choose what they love; how people integrate loss and gain; how they distort experience by wish and dream; how they perceive and consolidate flashes of harmony; how they (to end a list otherwise endless) achieve what Keats called a "Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity." Helen Verdahl

"The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing." Samuel Johnson

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
Goethe

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” Aristotle

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” Kahlil Gibran

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen”
Leonardo da Vinci

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these”
Emily Dickinson

“Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.”
Vincent van Gogh

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Robert Frost

Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking”
John Wain

“Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” Thomas Gray

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.”
Carl Sandburg

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech” Simonides

"There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either." Robert Graves

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things. Stephen Mallarme

"The poet doesn't invent. He listens." Jean Cocteau

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” Goethe

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” Kahlil Gibran

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
Goethe