Helen Vendler Quotes

It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.

It's not easy to define poetry.

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

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

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

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: the best words in the best order.

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.

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

I keep trying to define 'poetry,' but it's so difficult.

I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

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

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 the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

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.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.