Poetry leans toward the edge of truth, toward that moment when a thought becomes clear or when a feeling, long held and unnamed, finally steps forward. This page gathers more voices that break through habit, expectation, and silence to reveal something essential about being human.

As St. John Perse once wrote, “The poet is the one who bre aks through our habits.”

“The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.” ~ Wallace Stevens

“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have left him alone.” ~ Thomas Hardy

“There is no question that the language of ‘felt thought’ must be quarried from our personal depths. Like the best gold, it does not lie on the surface.” ~ Jacques Maritain

“Business and poetry aren’t odd bedfellows. They both draw their water out of the same well. They are both concerned with making order out of chaos. I see myself as someone who wanders the world turning what I see into money and poetry. I can’t imagine doing one without the other.” ~ John Barr

“The meaning of poetry has no sureness of direction; it is like the sling, it is not under control.” ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” ~ Robert Frost

“No time for poetry but exactly what is.” ~ Jack Kerouac

“Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet, above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again with their original freshness.” ~ Stephen Spender

“My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That’s why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.” ~ Ishmael Reed

“Poetry confronts in the most clear-eyed way just those emotions which consciousness wishes to slide by.” ~ C. K. Williams

“I feel that anything is possible in a poem.” ~ Mark Strand

“A poet who reads his own verse in public may have other nasty habits.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein

“A poet has no identity; he is continually filling some other body, the sun, the moon, the sea and men and women.” ~ John Keats

“A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.” ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.” ~ R. Z. Sheppard

“All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton