Poetic Impact Quotes

As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.

Poetry can startle you, awaken you, make you fall in love, take your breath away. When those words sink in, you'll never look at your life or your journey the same way again.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind... The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself.

If you want a definition of poetry, say: Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing and let it go at that.

If I were brave enough to say so, I'd like to think that I had written some poems that people are not going to forget.

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.

For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'

There are the tears of rage when books get praised when they're so obviously garbage. But then there are so many more that continue to move me: the end of 'Paradise Lost,' 'The Ruined Cottage' by Wordsworth, Prospero's 'Our revels now are ended' speech near the end of 'The Tempest.'

What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

Poetry is what makes my toenails twinkle.

It is not enough for poems to be fine; they must charm, and draw the mind of the listener at will.

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.

Weaknesses have a certain function in a poem... some strategy in order to pave the reader's way to the impact of this or that line.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling.

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.

If a poet writes to save his soul, he may save the soul of others.

If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect.

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

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.