Poetics Quotes

“What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”
― William Wordsworth

“Un mot et tout est perdu, un mot et tout est sauvé.”
― Andre Breton

“It’s your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours. I hope I haunt you.”
― Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

“The unspeakable visions of the individual.”
― Jack Kerouac

“There is no single thing... that is so cut and dried that one cannot attend to its secret whisper which says 'I am more than just my appearance'. If each object quivers with readiness to imply something other than itself, if each perception is a word in a poem dense with connotations, then the poet's selection of any given subject of speculation will become... a means of attuning himself to the rhythms and harmonies of reality at large. ... The notion of a network of correspondence is not an outmoded Romantic illusion: it represents a crucial intuition...”
― Roger Cardinal, Figures of Reality

“All good poems are victories over something.”
― Stephen Dunn

“The genuine artist, Harris is saying, finds reality in a point of identity between subject and object, a point at which the created world and the world that is really there become the same thing. [p.211]”
― Northrop Frye, The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination

“Human beings, in a sense, may be thought of as multidimensional creatures composed of such poetic considerations as the individual need
for self-realization, subdued passions for overwhelming beauty, and a hunger for meaning beyond the flavors that enter and exit the physical body.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“With women poets we look at or into, but not up at, sacred things; we unlearn submission.”
― Alicia Ostriker, Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America

“To Wallace Stevens' post-Nietzschean formula 'God and the imagination are one,' these women poets would add a crucial third element: God and the imagination and my body are one.”
― Alicia Ostriker, Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America

“The appropriation of the creativity-procreativity metaphor by women is a conscious challenge to traditional poetics and beyond that to traditional metaphysics, for the gynocentric vision is not that Logos condescends to incarnate itself, but that Flesh becomes Word.”
― Alicia Ostriker, Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America

“the next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern.”
― Annie Finch

“The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”
― T.S Eliot

“Poetry Is The Language Of Mysticism &
Discourse. It Is The Whisper In The Dark,
The Shadow In The Light. Poetry Is An Incantation From The Depths Of Your Very Soul.”
― R.M. Engelhardt, The Resurrection Waltz Poems R.M. Engelhardt

“Poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements.”
― Aristotle

“Unlike essayists whom write primarily to understand complex situations or convince other people of the righteousness of their opinions, poets strive to stir memories, provoke feelings, and evoke emotions. Poets do not write to reach that exalted perch where logic replaces feelings. Poets write about the connective tissue that makes us human, the poignant remembrances, hopes, fears, and emotions of humankind. It is not our ability to think standing alone that makes us human, but a mélange of incongruous feelings, emotional tidings that are virtually inexpressible.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“x = а < А”
― Oleksander Potebnja, З лекцій теорії словесности. Байка, прислів'я, приповідка

“Чи досить уже розвинулась трагедія у всіх своїх видах, чи ні, якщо розглядати її саму по собі і щодо вимог театру, — це питання окреме. І трагедія, і комедія виникли напочатку з імпровізації, перша — від заспівачів дифірамбів, друга — від заспівачів фалічних пісень, які й досі ще залишаються у звичаях багатьох міст.”
― Aristotle, Poetics

“There is an attitude that has developed since about the 1890s that attempts to cast all politics and sociology out of poetry. I don't understand how anyone can seriously maintain this attitude. Actually, the attitude itself is political. Art which embodies the ideals of the ruling class in society isn't conceived as being political, and is simply judged by how well it is done. Art which contains ideas which threaten the position of that ruling class is silenced by critics: it is political, they say, and not art.”
― Marge Piercy, Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt

“Poetry is a satisfying of the desire for resemblance. As the mere satisfying of a desire, it is pleasurable. But poetry if it did nothing but satisfy a desire would not rise above the level of many lesser things. Its singularity is that in the act of satisfying the desire for resemblance it touches the sense of reality, it enhances the sense of reality, heightens it, intensifies it.”
― Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

“We cannot look at the past or the future except by means of the imagination but again the imagination of backward glances is one thing and the imagination of looks ahead something else. Even the psychologists concede this present particular, for, with them, memory involves a reproductive power, and looks ahead involve a creative power: the power of our expectations.”
― Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

“A good poem or poet
is like a good cigar or a
good whiskey. Everyone
Has their own preferences.”
― R.M. Engelhardt, OF SPIRIT, ASH & BONE POEMS PARABLES R.M. ENGELHARDT

“From ancient lore to modern science poets are supposed to be the revelators, the prophets and the seers. Poets are supposed to shine the light in the dark corners where there is none or just a mere amount capable of hope through words . But? What if being a poet doesn't mean any of these things in the 21st century? Are we evolving or are we losing our focus ? In great testaments to the art of writing we make grand statements like " Poetry Matters" " Poetry Is Still Alive & Well" But unless we actually push forth these antiquated ideals and reboot them into the new we really are no longer something that humanity needs.

Reinvent these old ideals.
Write & create in the now.
Renew the waters of creation which we thrive in.

And for fucks sake.

Invoke Alexa if you have to !”
― R.M. Engelhardt, R A W POEMS R.M. ENGELHARDT

“The ongoing problem with most American poetry & poets today is their lack of belief in themselves & that they don't expand upon their ideals or experiment enough with their craft. That's why we are all stuck in the same old literary grind & groove still pushing out old ideas, listening to ridiculous banter of egotistical critics & still worshipping the old schools & movements of long past yesterdays from decades ago. Dead icons, dead ideas, dead slams and an established academic system that's biased and too busy promoting all the cliche events that they believe are all about community but mainly promoting their own of which are not open to all poets without degrees but mostly only to students & the inner sanctum. Poetry is for everyone and it needs a new vision of our times. The 21st century. The majority of poets who are producing new & original works are being ignored. Poetry should be independent and free of bias and uncategorized.

Workshops or classes are not the solution.”
― R.M. Engelhardt, R A W: POEMS R.M. ENGELHARDT

“For as an essential characteristic of the formula is repeat, an essential of simile is uniqueness.”
― RIchmond Lattimore (Translation), The Iliad of Homer

“There is a thin line between poetry and word salad.”
― Richard Carl Evans, Prosopography In Blue

“A skeleton of forgotten origin undresses at our front door”
― Richard Carl Evans, Prosopography In Blue

“To be a poet, then, is no more or less than to be fully human and to translate and distill that experience into language so meticulously as to evoke and redeem something of life itself." from On the Edge of Motherhood and Poetics”
― Brit Washburn, Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose

“A lifespan, a split second
That changes everything
Carry each other
The poet says, this matters
More than anything”
― Aileen Cassinetto

“Poets tend society’s gardens.
Nurturing seeds, plucking weeds.”
― Chastity Gunn