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" Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. "
Allen Ginsberg
Time
Thinking
Think
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" When I applied for grad school, I did not specify genre. I said I wanted an MFA in Creative Writing. I was so cute and stupid! The admissions committee at Pitt decided to put me in poetry. "
Terrance Hayes
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Cute
Writing
" Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead. "
Seamus Heaney
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Break
" When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me. "
Marv Levy
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" The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan. "
Patti Smith
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Poetry
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" America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. "
Allen Ginsberg
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" And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written. "
Mark Strand
Culture
Like
Poetry
" Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you've got to burn away all the peripherals. "
Sylvia Plath
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" When we were 15, my girlfriend Ruth Kaplan and I applied to the Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City. We were accepted into a program that placed us with a lovely Mexican family. We lived with them for six weeks while studying Spanish poetry and Mexican anthropology. "
Mary Doria Russell
Poetry
Studying
City
" He could not die when trees were green, for he loved the time too well. "
John Clare
Die
Trees
Green
" I've been writing since I was 10 or 11. I started with poetry because that was the easiest thing. It just kind of came naturally. I think at that time West Coast hip hop was huge; all these kids around me were like, 'I want to be a rapper.' But I'm a white girl, not going to be a rapper. "
Sasha Grey
Writing
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Poetry
" By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar. "
David Whyte
Interesting
Just
Poetry
" Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! "
Lord Byron
Which
Stars
Space
" I don't believe that poetry is in danger because nobody wants to read it or appreciate it. There is a tremendous audience for it on any given day or night. You just have to know where to look. "
Derek Walcott
Look
Poetry
Night
" Why should poetry have to make sense? "
Charlie Chaplin
Sense
Make
Poetry
" Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry. "
Wislawa Szymborska
Talent
Vacuum
Polish
" You have to be careful about over-politicizing the utterances of people of colour because, oftentimes, there's poetry that seeks to go beyond that narrative. "
Kehinde Wiley
Colour
People
You
" The moment of change is the only poem. "
Adrienne Rich
Only
Poetry
Moment
" I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry. "
Ben Okri
Past
Way
Day
" That's all there was in our house: poetry and choir rehearsal and duets and so forth; I listened to Dad and Mother discuss things about poetry and delivery and voice and diction - I don't think anyone could know how much it really means. "
Chuck Berry
Know
Mother
Much
" In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don't care about my cinema. In Europe, they don't know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick! "
Jonas Mekas
Know
I Am
Poetry
" All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry. "
Gustave Flaubert
True
Poetry
Geometry
" A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses. "
Jean Cocteau
Roses
Bother
Poet
" The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading. "
Edward Hirsch
Poetry
Reading
Myself
" In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself. "
Seamus Heaney
Ring
Within
Truth
" I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. "
Steven Wright
Thought
Poetry
Everything
" I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up. "
Keith Haring
Swallowed
Been
Up
" I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry. "
James Tate
Poetry
Training
Imagination
" Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. "
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poets
World
Legislators
" I was a very creative child. I played the saxophone and piano, and I was always writing poetry and stories, or drawing in my notebook. I just tried to express myself through as many creative outlets as possible. And in high school, I started to get really into photography and videography and would spend hours working on it. "
Kali Uchis
Myself
Writing
School
" I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age. "
Rita Dove
Poetry
Time
Lens