Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

A novelist can get by on story, but the poet has nothing but the words.

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 seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

It's not easy to define poetry.

A really good poem is full of music.

I think poetry is a fabulous medium to encapsulate thoughts far more precisely than prose.

Poetry is how I feed the soul, and it's how I fire the furnace of writing.

When you write poetry you are always addressing the world somehow.

There are so many things that poetry is about, one of which is memory.

Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

Poetry is really a way of sharing feelings and ideas.

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.

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

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.

I like the machinery of poems, especially when they have human warmth.

Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.

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

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

What has always attracted me in life is poetry. Any genre can have poetry. For me, poetry contains truth.

Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.