Saturday, April 11, 2009

April, the Poetry Month

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, every April is National Poetry Month.

Poetry can distill our life, uplift our soul, ease our emotion and heal our wounds.

Poetry can bring gentle pleasure and delightful wisdom to the shrine in our heart.

Poetry is love in words, passion on paper, music in silence, and life in distillment.

Today, let me share with you my favorite quotes about poetry and poets:

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. ~ Sir Francis Bacon

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~Leonard Cohen

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. ~James Branch Cabell

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

The poem is the point at which our strength gave out. ~Richard Rosen

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~Novalis

God is the perfect poet. ~Robert Browning

Poetry is life distilled. ~Gwendolyn Brooks

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~Thomas Gray

Poetry, like the moon, does not advertise anything. ~William Blissett

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. ~Robert Frost

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. ~Samuel Johnson

If you've got a poem within you today, I can guarantee you a tomorrow. ~The Quote Garden

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. ~T.S. Eliot


9 comments:

Andrea said...

Personal favourite: Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn:)

Jade Meng said...

Agree. Poetry is as natural as breathing of thoughts and burning of words. When we think too hard, poetry loses its natural beauty.

Anonymous said...

In Ester Sunday morning, my favorite quote will be "God is the perfect poet. ~Robert Browning "

Happy Ester to you and your family

Jade Meng said...

Perhaps because God is the perfect poet, we have to help ourselves.

Jaliya said...

Hi, Jade :-)

April and poetry ... a perfect match, don't you think?

Just last night I was sorting through old papers ... and found the first poem I ever wrote ... I was 14 at the time ...! It was typical of what most of us write at that age ... all "Sturm & Drang" ... ;-) ... but also passionately poetic ... I've been composing poems ever since (I'm now 50). I got a kick out of how **bad** ~~ !shudder ~~ the poem was but I understood where the impulse to write poetically came from ... It was a radical shift in perspective :-)

***************

Beautiful post. Thank you. Your words, "shrine in our heart", really grabbed me.

A poet does with words what Michelangelo did with marble:

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

Jade Meng said...

Agree, April and poetry are perfect match. I started to write poems when I was thirteen. When I read my early poems I am surprised that I was very deep at that young age - writing about meaning of life.

I ever visited your blog "the Quoteable I Ching", profound ancient Chinese philosophy, very nice.

Michelangelo is a great artist. I plan to write something about him next time.

Anonymous said...

I've been encouraging people to celebrate National Poetry Month with posts on my various blogs. In particular, The Wordsmith's Forge has a Poetry Fishbowl once a month. The poems from the April event are being posted, and older ones are also visible, in the "poem" tag:
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/tag/poem

PeacefulWmn9 said...

Beautiful quotes all.

nothing profound said...

It's May, and I'm a bit late. But here's a quote of mine about poetry:

A poem is not poetry. Poetry is the world.