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" Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry. "

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" I define poetry as celebration and confrontation. When we witness something, are we responsible for what we witness? That's an on-going existential question. Perhaps we are and perhaps there's a kind of daring, a kind of necessary energetic questioning. Because often I say it's not what we know, it's what we can risk discovering. "

Yusef Komunyakaa

Know

Poetry

Say

" The commitment to working at poetry is important because a poet is a maker, and a poem is a made thing. We have to honor our feelings by working to transform them into something meaningful and lasting. "

" I don't like to have a calm, orderly, quiet place to work. I often compose while driving, compose in my head. It is true that I wrote my little book, 'The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide,' almost entirely in airplanes and airport departure lounges. "

" Poetry was my 'in' to the idea that I could express myself through art. "

" Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry. "

" Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling. "

" The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. "

" I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head; it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way. "

" Ted Hughes is dead. That's a fact, OK. Then there's something called the poetry of Ted Hughes. The poetry of Ted Hughes is more real, very soon, than the myth that Ted Hughes existed - because that can't be proven. "

Derek Walcott

Dead

Real

" Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince. "

" The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight. "

" I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet. "

" I am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life. "

" The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry. "

" Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see good poetry in advertising. "

" I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. "

" If I have to make a self-portrait, I would put poetry and rebellion on the list. To be able to walk on a wire, to be able to juggle six hoops, you need focus, another word for tenacity, which is passion. "

" Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead. "

" There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints. "

" Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture. "

" People compose poetry, novels, sitcoms - for love. "

" It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video. "

" The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. "

T. S. Eliot

Emotions

Feelings

" Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing. "

" A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. "

" You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble. "

" I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about! "

" I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use. "

" Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words. "

" The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry. "