“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.”
Poetry says in twenty words what prose takes two hundred to approximate. These quotes explore the craft, the beauty, and the necessity of verse — from poets who live for it and readers who are grateful they do.
“I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper.”
“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.”
“There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.”
“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.”
“Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.”
“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.”
“And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But, after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies, I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.”
“The biggest problem is people are afraid of poetry, think they can't understand it or that it will be boring.”
“In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.”
“And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.”
“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
“I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale.”
“When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.”
“Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.”
“I never really liked poetry readings I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.”
“From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.”