Jim Elliot Quotes

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.

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 is all I write, whether for books or readings or for the National Theatre or for the opera house and concert hall or even for TV.

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.

ART is domination. It's making people think that for that precise moment in time there is only one way, one voice. Yours.

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.

Not all poetry wants to be storytelling. And not all storytelling wants to be poetry. But great storytellers and great poets share something in common: They had something to say, and did.

We all sing about the things we're thinking; musicals are about expressing those emotions that you can't talk about. It works a real treat.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

Back in those early days when I began my apprenticeship as a poet, I also tried to voice our anger, spirit of defiance and resistance in a Jamaican poetic idiom.

I want to be a poet and have a chance to explore that and let people know what's really on my mind.

The only thing you can really say in a poem is what you really, really deeply believe.

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Words can have the same kind of magic as riffs can.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

A picture is a poem without words.

The music is the main thing and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.

Words make love with one another.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.

Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.