Paul Engle Quotes

I've written poetry most of my life.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.

Nay, what is worse, perhaps turn poet, which, they say, is an infectious and incurable distemper.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

Poetry is evidently a contagious complaint.

There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.

I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

Poetry is an orphan of silence.

Poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit, and the very phrase of angels.

A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.

I grew up around poets and novelists and my dad wrote poems about everything - from a cat sleeping in a window to a car wreck he passed on the highway. I learned not to censor myself: that was one of things I learned in my apprenticeship, my creative-writing apprenticeship with my dad.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed.

Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music.

Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start.

[To become a poet] The most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it's so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

Your poems are of interest to mankind; your liver isn't. Drink till you write well and feel sick. Bless your poems and be damned to you.

Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time.