20 Poets (and one comedian) on the Awesome Power of Poetry
PS: Not all roses are red, not all violets are blue
If you are like most human beings, chances are good that your introduction to poetry was totally lame — an unholy cocktail of roses are red, violets are blue, bad limericks, and trying to figure out what the big deal was about iambic pentameter.
Bummer. Big bummer. Humongous bummer. And why it’s such a bummer is because poetry — at least the good stuff — is the fast track to feeling, clarity, and understanding in your bones what it really means to be alive.
What follows are 21 juicy quotes from 21 juicy people doing their poetic best to distill the estimated 860 million words a person speaks in a lifetime down to sentence or two in a grand attempt to let the rest of us in on the mostly untold secret of poetry. Enjoy!
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” — Leonard Cohen
“The poet is the priest of the invisible.” — Wallace Stevens
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” — Emily Dickinson
“Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
