Joseph Brodsky Quotes

poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

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 nothing but healthy speech.

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time.

The advice I continually give to young writers is this, "Learn to paint pictures with words." Not just once upon a time, but ... In the long secret dust of ages, beneath a blue forgotten sky, where trade winds caress the sun bleached shores of unknown realms ... See, as much as there are words in poetry, there is a poetry in words. Use it, stay faithful to the path you have set your heart upon and follow it.

Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.

Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know ... if one is honest.

The temple of art is built in words.

Even the greatest poets can't express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances.

I think poetry is as old as language, and both come out of the same thing - an effort to try to express something that is inexpressible.

Poetry isn't an activity, it's a way life is lived.

Art after all is but an extension of language to the expression of sensations too subtle for words.

Sometimes only poetry can say it. I think there's just this deeper language, and away of putting your world back together again and breaking through barriers.

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.

A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.

The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.

We were romantics. We didn't just read poetry. We let it drip from our tongues like honey. Spirits soared. Women swooned, and gods were created, gentlemen. Not a bad way to spend an evening, eh?

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.

Poetry is the eloquence of verse.

poetry is where the language is renewed.

Poets sing our human music for us.