The theme of Death is to Poetry what Mistaken Identity is to Drama.

-Abse, Dannie
  Journal entry, Feb, collected in Journals from the Ant-Heap (1986).

No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.

-Ackroyd, Peter
  Chatterton, ch.10.

Poetry is music written for the human voice.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  In'The Power of the Word', Public Broadcasting Service,15 Sep.

Nothing has raised more questioning among my critics thanthese wordsönoble, thegrand style† Ithink it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

-Arnold, Matthew
  On Translating Homer; Last Words.

In poetry, no less than in life, he is 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain'.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Of Shelley. Essays in Criticism Second Series,'Shelley'. The phrase is a quotation from his own work on Byron.

More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Essays in Criticism Second Series,'The Study of Poetry'.

The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden,Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Essays in Criticism Second Series,'Thomas Gray'.

Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Essays in Criticism Second Series,'Wordsworth'.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

-Ashbery,John Lawrence
  In the International Herald Tribune, 2 Oct.

   You were silly like us: your gift survived it all; 40 The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'In Memory of  W.B.Yeats', pt.2.

   Earth receive an honoured guest; WilliamYeats is laid to rest: Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'In Memory of  W.B.Yeats', pt.3.

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'Epitaph On  A  Tyrant'.

Nos beaux sentiments ne sont-ils pas les poe¤  sies de la volonte¤  ? Aren't our best feelings poetry of the will?

-Balzac, Honore¤   de
  Le Pe'  re Goriot.

Il est l'heure de s'enivrer! Pour n'e"  tre pas les esclaves martyrise¤  s duTemps, enivrez-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poe¤  sie ou de vertu, a'   votre guise. This is the time for drunkenness! Be not the martyred slaves of Time, drink without stopping! Drink wine, poetry, or virtue, as you please.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  Le Spleen de Paris,'Enivrez-vous'.

Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.

-Beerbohm, Sir (Henry) Max(imilian)
  And Even Now,'The Pines'.

Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end.Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

-Bentham,Jeremy
Quoted in M St  J Packe The Life of  John Stuart Mill (1954), bk.1, ch.2.

My girls suffered during this month or so, so did my seminars & lectures & my poetry even. To be a critic, ah, how deeper and more scientific.

-Berryman,John originally John Allyn Smith
  'Olympus'.

Mastery in poetry consists largely in the instinct for not ruining or smothering or tinkering with moments of vision.

-Blunden, Edmund Charles
  'Leigh Hunt'.

Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.

-Bodenheim, Maxwell
Quoted in Ben Hecht's play Winkelberg (1958).

Clear Cymric voices carry well this Autumn night, Aneurin and Taliesin, cruel owls for whom it is never altogether dark before the rules made poetry a pedant's game.

-Bunting, Basil
  Briggflatts.