poem

The best way to read [a poem] is offthetop of yourhead, and out of the corner of your eye.

—NewYorkTimes

A chryselephantine poem of immeasurable length which will occupy me for the next four decades unless it becomes a bore.

—Pound, Ezra Loomis

Une danse est un poe'  me. A dance is a poem.

—Diderot, Denis

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem. See Frost 338:84.

—Vidal, Gore originally Eugene Luther Vidal,Jr

If I be evil intreated, or sent away with a flea in mine ear, let him look that Iwill rail onhimsoundly; nor foranhour or a day, whiles the injury is fresh in my memory; but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the world when I am dead, to be a living image to all ages of his beggarly parsimony and ignoble illiberality.

—Nashe,Thomas

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any otheranimals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and thescience of metaphysics.

—Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis)

The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form.Yourown consciousnessisthe only formyouneed.

—Saroyan,William

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but whichthe middle-aged man can't.

—Updike,John Hoyer

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it.

—Thomas, Dylan Marlais

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it. 284

—Dove, Rita Frances

En vano te hemos prodigado el oce¤  ano, En vano el sol, que vieron los maravillados ojos de Whitman; Has gastado los an‹  os y te has gastado, Y todav|¤a no has escrito el poema. We have lavished the ocean on you in vain, In vain the sun that was seen by Whitman's astounded eyes; You have spent your years and you have spent yourself, But you haven't written the poem yet.

—Borges,Jorge Luis

I could never begin a poem: 'When I am dead' In case it tempted Fate, and Fate gave way.

—McGough, Roger

There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

—Carlyle,Thomas

What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters'thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admire'  d themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest.

—Marlowe, Christopher

I have met with women whom I really think would liketo be married to a poem, and to be given away by a novel.

—Keats,John

It is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem.

—Emerson, RalphWaldo

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

—Frost, Robert Lee

Aphorismsgive you more for your time and money than any other literary form.Only the poem comes near to it, but then most good poems either start off from an aphorism orarrive at one† Aphorisms and epigrams are the corner-stones of literaryart.

—Dudek, Louis

If the poem can be improved by its author's explanations, it should never have been published.

—MacLeish, Archibald

The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art.

—Miller, Henry Valentine

At its best a poem full of space and reverie.

—Baudelaire, Charles

No one can read a poem unless he realises that it is a physical object as well as an abstract vehicle for conveying ideas. A poem has a material existence like a piece of music or sculpture or a plate of meat.

—MacBeth, George Mann

The poem†is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we seeöit is, rather, a light by which we may seeöand what we see is life.

—Warren, Robert Penn

A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

—Keats,John

Un poe'  me n'est jamais acheve¤  öc'est toujours un accident qui le termine, c'est-a'  -dire qui le donne au public. A poem is never finished; it is always an accident that puts a stop to it, that gives it to the public.

—Vale¤  ry, Paul

A poem is at once the most primitive and most sophisticateduse of language, but myemphasisis onthe former.

—Kunitz, StanleyJasspon

   Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its ownmelting. A poemmay be worked overonce it isin being, but may not be worried into being.

—Frost, Robert Lee

A Poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit.

—MacLeish, Archibald

A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds.

—MacLeish, Archibald

A poem should not mean But be.

—MacLeish, Archibald

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants. SeeAuden 40:2.

—Nemerov, Howard

The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal woundöthat he will never get over it.

—Frost, Robert Lee

The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.

—Thomas, Dylan Marlais

The poem in the rock and The poem in the mind Are not one. It was in dying I tried to make them so.

—Thomas, R(onald) S(tuart)

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

—Whitman,Walt(er)

  Neither our vices nor our virtues further the poem.

—Dunbar,William

What is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self- understanding? It is the deepest part of autobiography.

—Warren, Robert Penn

No race can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.

—Washington, BookerTaliaferro