Joshua Cohen Quotes

It's not easy to define poetry.

Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There's too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliterations. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to absorb it all.

I read mostly poetry.

Poems seem to have a life of their own. They tell you when enough is enough.

Poetry, just because it is poetry, doesn't mean it is some kind of magic spell.

Poetry is not an art or a branch of art: it's something more.

I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

Poetry is not easy. Or should I say, real poetry is not easy.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Form is endlessly interesting to me, and I love poetry as a formal enterprise.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.

I like to write poetry.

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

The cliche is dead poetry.

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.