Great Quotes

"If a novel is winter, and a short story is a snow storm, then a poem is a snowball, squeezed." ~ Bruce Dethlefsen

"I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness." ~ Billy Collins

"The door to what a poem is should be left wide open." ~ Joe Sottile

"Poets are those who notice." ~ Phyllis Beckman

"Most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people." ~ Adrian Mitchell

"There have not been many American poets, living or dead, you’d want to bring home to meet your grandmother or have speak to your Bible study group".  ~ Charles Simic

"...good poetry can be as ornate as a cathedral or as bare as a pottingshed..." ~ Mona Van Duyn

"Poetry is pleasure. If it’s not pleasure, it’s not worth reading."  ~ Louis Jenkins

"Your relationship with poetry is what it is. You like what you like. It means to you what it means. It isn't a test."  ~ British comedian Robert Webb, featured in the BBC2 program, "My Life in Verse"

"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."  ~ Carl Sandburg

"America may be going to hell in every other way, but fine poems continue to be written now and then." ~ Charles Simic

"Poetry is life distilled."  ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

"Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry."  ~ Muriel Rukeyser

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."  ~ Paul Valery

"Poetry: the best words in the best order."  ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world. I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced , or felt something like what I have felt. And their poem gives me hope and courage, because I know that they survived, that their life force was strong enough to turn experience into words and shape it into meaning and then bring it toward me to share. The gift of their poem enters deeply into me and helps me live and believe in living. ~ Gregory Orr, from "The Making of Poems," broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered, 2/20/06