Gertrude Stein Quotes

By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means.

The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.

Poetry has become the higher algebra of metaphors.

Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit.

Poetry has an indirect way of hinting at things. Poetry is feminine. Prose is masculine. Prose, the very structure of it, is logical; poetry is basically illogical. Prose has to be clear-cut; poetry has to be vague - that's its beauty, its quality. Prose simply says what it says; poetry says many things. Prose is needed in the day-to-day world, in the marketplace. But whenever something of the heart has to be said, prose is always found inadequate - one has to fall back to poetry.

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.

Poetry is a satifying of the desire for resemblance.

Poetry is an extra hand. It can caress or tickle. It can clench and fight.

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

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

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

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

In every culture, in every language, there is expressive play, expressive word play; there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

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

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.