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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army. (Kilcher Jewel)
I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true. (Kilcher Jewel)
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it. (Kilcher Jewel)
Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying. (Kilcher Jewel)
Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest. (Kilcher Jewel)
Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections. (Kilcher Jewel)
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. (Kilcher Jewel)
Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry. (Kilcher Jewel)
The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either. (Kilcher Jewel)
Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind. (Kilcher Jewel)
Poetry is life distilled. (Kilcher Jewel)
An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence. (Kilcher Jewel)
Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feelings, reviews the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human mature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feelings, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. (Kilcher Jewel)
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth -- the true poet is very near the oracle. (Kilcher Jewel)
Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, the matter to digest, to cull fit phrases, and reject the rest. (Kilcher Jewel)
Poetry is indispensable --if I only knew what for. (Kilcher Jewel)
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically. (Kilcher Jewel)
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; --poetry = the best words in the best order. (Kilcher Jewel)
That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. (Kilcher Jewel)
To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one. (Kilcher Jewel)
It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing. (Kilcher Jewel)
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