Poetry Thinks

Scroll down to see a collection of some of my favorite quotes on poetry and links to some intriguing poetry sites. I hope you enjoy this page. New quotes and site suggestions are always welcome!

Some of my favorite quotes on poetry.

The Barbara Juster Esbensen Memorial celebrates the life and writings of this talented and beloved children's poet.

I've discovered some pioneering sites that merge poetry, visual art, and the interactive capabilities of the Internet medium. Because these sites use Flash, Java or other "plug-ins" be prepared for long download times. They're fun, though!

Libby Hathorn, an Australian poet used Flash™ to create some wild visual poems.

If you've ever wondered what role writing plays in your life ... or the lives of your students, read this powerful essay, Reflections of a Nonwriter, by Cheryl Sawyer.

Pulitzer-winner Jorie Graham explores the value of poetry in the education of our children in a thought-provoking essay in which she comments:

"When you give a child poems (remembering, once the silence closes back over the end of the poem, not to ask "what does this mean?" but rather, "what did you feel?" or "what did you see?"), you are opening up different parts of his or her reading apparatus than fiction or drama or journalism open up."

Quotes

Just scroll down the page...

"Poetry, like rain, should fall with elemental music...poetry for children should keep reminding them ... that the English language is a most marvelous and availing instrument." David McCord, Poet Interview 3/87: The Five Owls
	"Poetry is probably the only form of reading one can most appreciate without fully understanding the words. Poetry works on rhythm and sound as much as on word knowledge.. [making] it safe for struggling readers." Joanne Durham, Teacher "On time and poetry" Reading Teacher. 9/97
"Even beginning readers can know if a poem appeals to them...because it enables them to see things in ways they've never seen before. For example: since I read James Reeves' poem about the snail as a 'toppling caravan,' I've never been able to look at snails the same way... The poet's job, you see, is not to give us straight encyclopedic fact but to tell us something new or to tell something old in a new way—to give us fresh images." Myra Cohn Livingston, Poet Interview with Michael Cart: Carte Blanche: Booklist 6/95
	"...a good poem contains both meaning and music." Eve Merriam, Poet "Inside a Poem" The Writer 4/92
"I think I discovered poetry only a year ago. I never really understood poetry or had the patience for it. I wasn't aware of the fact, as much as I am now, that it's a different language." Leo Lionni, Author Interview by Elisabeth Bumiller New York Times, September 5, 1997
	"Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement." Christopher Fry "A poem should not mean, but be." Archibald MacLeish
"Poetry is the kind of thing you have to see from the corner of your eye...For a poem is not the end, but the beginning, of an excursion. Back and forth we go—scenes, impressions, ideas. All sorts of quick glimpses are quickly dismissed as random or uninteresting, but some lead richly onward." William Stafford Writing the Australian Crawl

From Creative Nonfiction by Lee Gutkind
A Conversation with Diane Ackerman

A poem is so small a canvas on which to work, so compressed a form, that you're somehow reduced to taking contingency samples. You have to somehow capture the gesture or mood and that puts an enormous amount of pressure on every word, every space, every half rhyme that you use. I love that."

Diane Ackerman

From the introduction to A Tune Beyond Us edited by Myra Cohn Livingston

In an age of science and definition, it sometimes seems important to reflect that art escapes definition by its appeal to man's senses, sensibilities, and emotions. Poetry is a place where we are not expected to define or analyze or answer questions. We can simply laugh or cry or wonder or turn the page until we find a poem that sings the tune we wish to hear. It's as easy as that.

Myra Cohn Livingston

From Latin Poetry

Be brief in what you say, in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full.

Horace The Art of Poetry (1st Century Poetry)

One thing that encouraged me was how playful and inventive children’s talk sometimes was. They said true things in fresh and surprising ways. …….Some children’s poetry was marvelous, but most seemed uncomfortably imitative of adult poetry or else childishly cute. It seemed restricted somehow, and it obviously lacked the happy, creative energy of children’s art. I wanted to find, if I could, a way for children to get as much from poetry as they did from painting.

Kenneth Koch Wishes, Lies and Dreams

I put it in two words: Read aloud. Not just when they are small, I still read aloud to my three daughters, who are 20 to 30 years old."

Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate
"The Meter is Running" by Elizabeth Mehren,
Los Angeles Times 6/10/97

Poetry forces you to say what you have to say.

Octavia Butler, Author

Bringing children and poetry together can be one of the most exciting experiences in parenting or teaching. Over the years, however, I have noted in too many cases what I have coined the DAM approach—Dissecting, Analyzing, and meaninglessly Memorizing poetry to death.

Lee Bennett Hopkins  Pass the Poetry, Please

A poem is like a radio that can broadcast continuously for thousands of years.

Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is a different area of the brain (from fiction) — much closer to music and mathematics.

Margaret Atwood, BBC Radio 3

Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to those who need it.

Mario Ruoppola (from Il Postino)
[Contributor: Linda Gold]

Like the onion, poetry is a constant discovery. Peel the onion, layer after layer, until its very heart is reached...it adds taste, zest, and a sharp but sweet quality that enriches our lives.

Ruth Gordon Peeling the Onion
[Contributor: Dr. Gabb]

You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.

Maxim Gorky, Russian Writer (1868-1936)

From in interview in the New York Times with Stanley Kunitz, age 96:

You cannot count on being a poet every time you sit down at your desk with a pencil in hand. It's very willful. I have a creative cycle, and then I can be silent for days, for weeks, months, even, during my lifetime."

When asked what triggers a poem, Kunitz replied:

"I wish I knew. It's usually a phrase, an image. It's a rhythm more than anything else, and you ride on that rhythm until your own being rakes possession of it, and the wound and sense combine.

12-year old Katie's thoughts on poetry from True to Form by Elizabeth Berg:
If you see a sunset and try and describe it to someone in normal words, all you can say is, "Boy, I saw a great sunset last night." But if you are a poet, you can give it to someone to feel for themselves. Like you make a little seed of what you saw, they swallow it, and it blooms again inside their own heart."
"...then there is the scritch scritch of my pen, trying to say something so true. What if it works? Then when I read it again, the little voice inside will say, Yes. Yes. Yes.

Leshaya on poetry from Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan:
I read my poems. Page after page of beautiful words and thoughts and truths—the truest, realest things I know...I decided that night, reading poetry beneath a caged lightbulb, that real was when you could feel your whole body light up from within. When it didn't matter about day or night, dark or light, because you could carry the light with you, in the dancing, in the music, in the poetry.

"A story should be written for the sake of the last sentence and a poem for the sake of the last line."

Edgar Allen Poe

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