Imaginary Gardens Real Toads

Imaginary Gardens Real Toads

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.  Horace

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. Paul Valery

A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.  Yevtushenko

A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. Salman Rushdie

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. Oscar Wilde

Always be a poet, even in prose.  Baudelaire

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.  Cocteau

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content. Alfred de Musset

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. A.E. Housman

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. T.S. Eliot

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. Steven Wright

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved the Inquisition might have let him alone. Thomas Hardy

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.  Novalis

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.  Khalil Gibran

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.  Plato

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.  Marianne Moore

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.  John Keats

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. Eli Khamarov

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.  Gilbert K. Chesterton

To have great poets there must be great audiences.  Walt Whitman

Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.  Charles Simic

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.  Carl Sandburg

Joe Dolce