Quotes for the Journey
“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.” -W.H. Auden
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” -Emily Dickinson
“Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.” -Carl Sandburg
“Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.” -Christopher Fry
“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” -Leonardo da Vinci
​
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” -Yeats
​
"Poetry is the only history we have of human emotions. Most history books, what we call history books, are stories of battles and treaties, negotiations and beheadings and coronations. But poetry is the only reminder of this very essential part of being human, which is one's emotional life and all the dimensions it entails."
-Billy Collins
"My definition of poetry is confrontation and celebration...beckoning towards a shared participation. I hope (by writing and reading poetry) we're in a dialogue to keep each other human." -Yusef Komunyaaka
​
"I distrust sincere people. I also distrust, save for a few surpassing exceptions, sincere poem-makers, those persons terribly in earnest. Sincerity implies a lack of play and inventiveness. Sincere, terribly earnest poets don't entertain enough opposites, don't frolic enough with possibilities. They say, Let me tell you how I feel, or let me tell you how it is; they rarely discover more than they knew." -Stephen Dunn
​
"By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say, 'We loved the earth but could not stay.' " -Ted Kooser