Poetspeak

Shock and awe
assaults our many senses,
like a cat does with a snake,
shaking it
until it snaps its head off;
and yet
even in the terrible death throes
of that reptile,
and the keen killer's instinct
of that feline,
I find poetry.

Glenn Buttkus (1944-)


Poetry should please
by a fine excess
and not by singularity.
It should strike the reader
as a wording of his own
highest thoughts,
and appear
almost as a rememberance.

John Keats (1795-1821)


Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows...

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)


Writing poetry is
to hold judgment
on your soul.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)


Poetry is not a turning loose
of emotion,
but an escape from emotion;
it is not
the expression of personality,
but an escape
of personality.
But,
of course,
only those who have personality
and emotions
know what it really means
to escape from these things.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)


He
who aspires to be
a great poet,
must first become
a little child.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

Poetry
is the language in which
man explores
his own amazement.

Christopher Fry (b 1907)


A man is a poet
if the difficulties
inherent in his art
provide him with ideas.
And
he is not a poet
if they deprive him of ideas.

Paul Valery (1871-1945)


Children and lunatics
cut the Gordian knot
which the poet
spends his life patiently
trying to untie.

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)


The philosopher's kind of mind
desires the general and the abstract;
the poet's mind
desires
the specific and the concrete:
" To see the world
in a grain of sand."

May Sarton ( b. 1912 )


When we talk of wild poetry,
we sometimes forget
the parallel of wildflowers.
They exist
to show that a thing may be
more modest and delicate
for being wild.

C.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)



A poet should be treatedwith lenience,
and even when damned,
should be damnedwith respect.

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)


Poets are mysterious, but
a poetwhen all is said and done
is not much more mysterioust
han a banker.

Allen Tate(1899-1979)


When writing poetry,
it is not inspiration
that produces bright ideas,
but the bright idea
that kindles the fire
of inspiration.

Cesare Pavese(1908-1950)


Everyone admires a poet,
no matter if he is a lumberjack,
or a football player,
or a car thief.
If he is a poet,
he will be
admired and respected.

Bob Dylan(b 1941 )


Reason
no more makes a poem
than salt
makes a dish,
but it is a constituent
of a poem,
as salt is a constituant
of a dish.

Fredrich Hebbel(1813-1863)


Poetry is the only art
people haven't learned
yet
to consume like soup.

W.H.Auden(1907-1973)


If it makes my whole body
so cold
no fire can warm me,
I know that it is poetry.

Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)


It is with words
as with sunbeams.
The more they are condensed,
the deeper they burn.

Robert Southey(1774-1843)

A good poet sticks
to his real loves,
those within the realm of possibility.
He never tries to hold hands
with God
or the human race.

Karl Shapiro( b 1913 )

Moon talk by a poet
who has not been to the moon
is likely to be dull.

Mark Twain(1835-1910)

Prose-
words in the best order;
poetry-
the best words in their best order.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)


The writer of prose
can only step aside
when the poet passes.

Somerset Maugham(1874-1965)


All fine and imaginative work
is self-conscious and deliberate.
No poet sings
because he must sing.
At least no great poet does.
A great poet sings
because he chooses to sing.

Oscar Wilde(1854-1900)


A blue whale
does not sing
because he has no language;
it sings because
it has a song.

Something Glenn Buttkus once heard in 2007


It is silly to suggest the writing
of poetry
as something
ethereal.
It doesn't come to you
on the wings of a dove.
It's something
you work hard at.

Louise Bogan(1897-1970)


Skilled verse
is the art
of a profound skeptic.

Paul Valery(1871-1945)


One merit of poetry
few persons will deny;
it says more,
and in fewer words,
than prose.

Voltaireaka: Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778)


Perfect things in poetry
do not seem strange,
they seem inevitable.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)


If poetry comes
not as naturally as leaves
to a tree,
it had better not come
at all.

John Keats (1795-1821)


With me poetry has not been
a purpose,
but a passion.

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)


When a man does not
write his poetry,
it escapes
by other vents
through him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
The lunatic,
the lover,
and the poet,
are of imagination
all compact.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)


Poetry is a language
which tells us,
through a more or less
emotional reaction,
something
that cannot be said.

Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)


Wordsworth went to the lakes,
but he was never a lake poet.
He found in stones
the sermon
she had already hidden there.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)


To some people a tree is something
so incredibly beautiful
that it brings tears to the eyes.
To others
it is just a green thing
that stands in the way.

William Blake (1757-1827)

If a poem can be improved
by its author's explanation,
it never should have been
published.

Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)


A poet can survive anything
but a misprint.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)


Poets alone
should kiss and tell.

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)


Poets are born,
not paid.

Addison Mizner(1872-1933)


Poetry
can be a wild bitch,
rising up scalding hot
like a cortical fever,
and only the focused strokes
of a poet's pen,
can truly extol, elaborate, and extinguish
that fibrous,
ethereal
fire.

Glenn Buttkus (1944-)


Publishing a volume of verse
is like dropping a rose petal
down the Grand Canyon,
and waiting for the echo.

Don Marquis (1878-1937)


Too many people in the modern world
view poetryas a luxury,
not a necessity,
like petrol.

Sir John Betjeman ( b 1906 )


There's no money in poetry,
but there's no poetry
in money,either.

Robert Graves(1895-1985)


A taste for drawing rooms
has spoiled more poets
than ever did a taste
for gutters.

Thomas Beer(1889-1940)


Reading these snippets makes one want to rush over, snag a sheet of pamprus, and scribble some verses, enit?

Glenn Buttkus 2007