Poetic Interpretation Quotes

As for how criticism of Keats' poetry relates to criticism of my own work, I'll leave that for others to decide.

Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry

I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry - all of the past you read is usually quite great - but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side.

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.

The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.

When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I'm tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold.

A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

That's the thing with me being a former athlete: in the way I attack characters and attack poetry is from the base of being an athlete.

All they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

I teach a lecture course on American poetry to as many as 150 students. For a lot of them, it's their only elective, so this is their one shot. They'll take the Russian Novel or American Poetry, so I want to give them the high points, the inescapable poets.

Poets... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts.

The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

No place is a place until it has found its poet.

I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does.

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

As you can imagine, over the years I have been asked many times to discuss and explain my song "American Pie." I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas. You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me. You will find many “interpretations” of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn’t this fun? Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.

I actually remember celebrating National Poetry Day at school; I remember having to write and read a load.

From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.

Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.

In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter.

We simply have not kept in touch with poetry.