Pondering Poetry
1848 Daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe at 39, a year before his death (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Poetry. I sometimes hate to admit I love it. It is misunderstood, mishandled, and would be missed should it ever be absent from our midst. As I teach AP I delve ever deeper in poetry and realize with some asperity I know nothing and have so much to learn. Learning from the masters is a place to start. May you also find solace and inspiration in these quotes found.
Poetry is serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.–Mary Oliver
I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.
Its sole arbiter is Taste.
—Edgar Allan Poe
A short poem need not be small.–Marvin Bell
A poem…begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a home-sickness, a love-sickness…It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.–Robert Frost
image: Wikipedia.org
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.–T.S. Eliot
For a man to become a poet…
he must be in love or miserable.
—George Gordon, Lord Byron
I think like a poet, and behave like a poet.
Occasionally I need to sit in the corner for bad behavior.–Gary Soto
There is nothing wrong with a poetry that is entertaining and easy to understand.
—Charles Bukowski
Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed.
The poet’s pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader’s pleasure in unlocking and revealing secrets.
—Diane Wakoski
Related articles
- World Poetry Day (dramaticpauseitc.wordpress.com)
- UNESCO World Poetry Day 2013 (curiositycreates.co.uk)
- Celebrating Rhymes (bookhad.wordpress.com)
Pam Webb 
Is poetry a form of communication ? If so shouldn’t its message be clear. I have trouble with Diane Wakoski’s statement. I don’t like the thought that poetry has to be analysed to appreciate it. To me it’s meaning and the beauty of its language should be clear to all.
I agree to some degree. Poetry is lovely without dissection, just gazing at the moon in reflection is bliss without bringing in a lesson of astronomy. Yet, I do find a deeper appreciation is achieved once wading in farther through some analysis. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
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