Amiri Baraka Quotes

Poetry is meant to be heard.

Poetry is composing for the breath.

Poems are a form of music, and language just happens to be our instrument - language and breath.

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

I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

Poetry is not an issue of form and enjambments. Poetry, as the word is classically used, has to do with sound and sense. It can be rhyme. It can be rhythm, pace, breath.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Prose is not so dependent on sound. The line of poetry, with the breaking of the line - to me, sound is the kind of doorway into poetry. And my sense of sound, or my ability to control it, lapsed or grew less.

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

Poetry was invented as an mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers.

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

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 comes alive to me through recitation.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader's experience. If it's a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it's a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

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.

Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.

Shakespeare is rhythmic; he is musical in the sense that he likes poetry, and he's musical because he constantly refers to settings where there's singing and dancing.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

Rhythm and sounds are born with syllables.