Reading Poetry Quotes

“A reader takes poetry deep within him or her by accommodating it within his/her range of consciousness. So there is a possibility that the poems are received and understood differently when they enter into readers’ sphere.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“A reader takes poetry deep within him or her by accommodating it within his/her range of consciousness.”
― Suman Pokhrel, भारत शाश्वत आवाज [Bharat Shashwat Aawaz]

“Poetry is less a respecter of individual persons than it is a compassionate witness to the meanings of the secret language that beats inside human hearts, the music that pulses through human cries, and the divinity which shines love beyond the veils of human limitations.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“A novel is a hearty meal, but poems are the Belgian chocolates of the bookshelf. You can pick one and linger over it. Savour the aroma, the taste, the melting texture, the sweet craving it leaves behind! Or you can scoff down as many as you can eat. It’s up to you.”
― Vicky Arthurs

“It may be that poetry’s real beauty and elegance is not its finely-chiseled lines or smoothly-rounded ideological concepts at all. The crown of its significance might be––or possibly should be?––its expansive capacity to embrace with equal passion the deadliest failings and the most splendid victories defining human existence.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“The struggling poet and writer
dreams again
of standing on stage
and reading his lines
once again...”
― Avijeet Das

“Poetry stirs the soul and speaks to the mind to understand the beauty we call life ~ Mala Naidoo”
― Mala Naidoo, Random Heart Poetry: Light and Shade

“Why do certain words pop out of the poem and stare you in the face? Is it because the rhythm marks them? Or the rhyme? Or are the words repeated? Do several stanzas seem to be about the same ideas; if so, do these ideas form any kind of sequence?
[How to Read a Book (1972), P. 225]”
― Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

“Read the poem through again—but read it out loud. We have suggested this before, in the case of poetic dramas like Shakespeare's. There it was helpful; here it is essential. You will find, as you read the poem out loud, that the very act of speaking the words forces you to understand them better. You cannot glide over a misunderstood phrase or line quite so easily if you are speaking it. Your ear is offended by a misplaced emphasis that your eyes might miss. And the rhythm of the poem, and its rhymes, if it has them, will help you to understand by making you place the emphasis where it belongs.
[How to Read a Book (1972), P. 224]”
― Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

“A poem is among reading's slowest roads....What is it to have read a poem well? To have caught an allusion, admired a formal twist, heard a music in the silent tumble of letters on the page? How long does it take to read a poem, anyway? Such reading does not proceed in continuous, countable units of hours and days. It is a minute, minutes, here and there, intense and distracted, questing, between trips to the dictionary, and it consists in endless, endless repetition. There is a great deal less reading than reading where poems are concerned. A poem once read is the first note of a symphony, a toe dipped in the water, the first mouthful after a fast--necessary experiences all, with joys of their own, but still preludes. A poem comes into being by means of our repeated encounters with it, and each of these encounters must stay slow. It is hard to stay slow enough to keep pace with a poem.”
― Heather Cass White, Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life

“There is a radical acceptance of equivalence in poetic language, a willingness to see, say, and celebrate the fact that things are like other things, which are like other things in turn. Immersion in equivalences comes at a cost, however, to the human desire that certain things be totally unlike and distinguishable from other things. For example, we would prefer that innocence not look like guilt. We would prefer that violence, savagery, and waste be wholly, and obviously, distinct from creation, art, and fulfillment. This is not the way things work very often in life, or in poetry.”
― Heather Cass White, Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life