“REALITY ONLY REVEALS ITSELF WHEN ILLUMINATED BY A RAY OF POETRY.”
—Georges Braque
“THE POET IS THE PRIEST OF THE INVISIBLE.”
—Wallace Stevens
“POETRY IS LIKE A BIRD; IT IGNORES ALL FRONTIERS.”
—Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“There’s a reason poets often say, ‘Poetry saved my life,’ for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul’s suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.”
—Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“POETRY IS PLUCKING AT THE HEARTSTRINGS AND MAKING MUSIC WITH THEM.”
—Dennis Gabor
"if i feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, i know that is poetry."
—Emily Dickinson
"Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, & the raising of consciousness."
—Alice Walker
“it is a test [that] genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.“
—T. S. Eliot
“poetry is nearer to vital truth than history."
—Plato
"the aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry."
—Victor Hugo
“poetry is what gets lost in translation.“
—Robert Frost
"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty."
—Rainer Maria Rilke
"Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them."
—Charles Simic
"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."
—T.S. Eliot
“Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it begins as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.”
