258 Poem Quotes for You to Enjoy

If you've ever been to a poetry slam, you know that the highest scoring emotion is self-righteous indignation: how dare you judge me. So in that way, the poem, 'What Teachers Make,' is an absolutely formulaic slam poem designed to allow me to get up on my soap box and say, 'Let me tell you what really makes me angry.' Taylor Mali

Angry Me You Judge Way Say Dare Tell Poem Indignation Poetry Absolutely Emotion Allow Highest Know Make Judge Me Box Makes How Self-Righteous Been Scoring Up Get Soap Really Teachers Slam Ever Designed

A poem gives me a chance to have an encounter with a feeling, with an experience, with a wish, with an idea. Tracy K. Smith

Me Experience Feeling Wish Poem Gives Idea Encounter Chance

Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take. A. R. Ammons

Other Poem Laws Poems Take Never Becoming Which Each Extensions

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning. A. R. Ammons

You Man Past Other Recognised Tell Telling Poem Purpose Go Nor Any Where Burning Reason

'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead now - it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I'm home with the kids and looking up, and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing. Aaron Neville

Time Home Writing Wife Moon Looking Big Sister Our Saw Kids Poem Had Cruise Anniversary Dead She Go Yellow Up Just Now Her Started Chance

Twitter was like a poem. It was rich, real and spontaneous. It really fit my style. In a year and a half, I tweeted 60,000 tweets, over 100,000 words. I spent a minimum eight hours a day on it, sometimes 24 hours. Ai Weiwei

There's a lot of rage in my head. I like the friction that means there is nothing relaxing about writing a poem. I can't afford to relax in any area of life. You have to keep your senses awake to all the complacency that kicks in - particularly for the English. Alice Oswald

Life You Writing Relax Nothing Rage Complacency Kicks Relaxing About Poem Area Head Like Particularly Friction Lot Afford Any Senses Means Your English Awake Keep

At each moment, a poem might grow into a totally different shape. It is not so much like working in a garden. It is more as if you remade the garden every day. Alice Oswald

Day You Garden Every Day Every Totally Poem More Remade Shape Like Different Might Much Working Moment Each Grow

People are so used to reading novels now, they just read a poem straight through to get the meaning. And that's something totally different from the slow way you read something if it's a tune; which to me a poem has to be. Alice Oswald

What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why. Allen Tate

Poem Written Came Question Where After Why

We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate. Allen Tate

Says Restate Poem Particular Know

A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all. Allen Tate

Alone History Three Morality Poem Never Instance Qualities Nor Conditions Than Any May Psychological Social Them Social Conditions Less Two

The radio stations will happily recycle a badly worded statement by a politician all day but will steer clear of broadcasting more than once or twice a poem by Tomas Transtromer or Rita Dove. Amitava Kumar

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city. Anatole Broyard

Service Pressed City Poem Rome

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both. Andrew Motion

When Keats says: 'Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses', what he means is that we don't necessarily believe what a poem is saying if it comes out and tells us in an absolutely head-on, in-your-face way; we only believe it to be true if we feel it to be true. Andrew Motion

Saying Be True Believe Pulses Our Philosophy Way Says Out Tells Poem Only Absolutely He Head-On True Feel Until Proved Us Means Keats Necessarily Axiom

I got the writing bug in the fourth grade when a poem of mine was published in the school newspaper. Music criticism came a little later, when I was in high school. Ann Powers

Music Writing School Criticism Later Mine High High School Poem Bug Got Came Grade Little Newspaper Published Fourth

There are different gradations of personhood in different poems. Some of them seem far away from me and some up close, and the up-close ones generally don't say what I want them to say. And that's true of the persona in the poem who's lamenting this as a fact of a certain stage of life. But it's also true of me as me. Anne Carson

I want the poem to be an experience - for both the listener and for myself. Anne Waldman

Myself Experience Poem Both Listener Want

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