pOetry QuOtes

There has not been any great talent without an element of madness.



Seneca

" The most valuable of talents is never using two words when one will do."

-Thomas jefferson

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)


POetry is an echO, asking a shadOw tO dance.

A great one!!
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"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."

Anaïs Nin

"Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of Nature."
Augustus Hare and Julius Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

"Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."

Colette, Casual Chance, 1964

Driss Boudhan a écrit:

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
Anton Chekhov

thanks driss for this one.it says a lot about poetry in few words.

True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,

As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.



Alexander Pope,
"An Essay on Criticism"

<BLOCKQUOTE>



The History of Rasselas,

Prince of Abissinia



By Samuel Johnson



Imlac's history continued. A dissertation upon poetry

"Wherever I went, I found that poetry was considered as the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to that which man would pay to the Angelick Nature. And it yet fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first: or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and invention, and the latter in elegance and refinement.
"I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fraterity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by memory the volumes that are suspended in the mosque of Mecca. But I soon found that no man was ever great by imitation. My desire of excellence impelled me to transfer my attention to nature and to life. Nature was to be my subject, and men to be my auditors: I could never describe what I had not seen: I could not hope to move those with delight or terrour, whose interests and opinions I did not understand.

"Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw every thing with a new purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified: no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination: he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety: for every idea is useful for the inforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power of diversifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruction.
"All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study, and every country which I have surveyed has contributed something to my poetical powers."

"In so wide a survey, said the prince, you must surely have left much unobserved. I have lived, till now, within the circuit of these mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of something which I had never beheld before, or never heeded."

"The business of a poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recal the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristicks which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.

"But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the spriteliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same: he must therefore content himself with the slow progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations; as a being superiour to time and place.

"His labour is not yet at an end: he must know many languages and many sciences; and, that his stile may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony."</BLOCKQUOTE>

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Charles Baudelaire

In plain words, Chaos was the law of nature Order was the dream of man.

Henry Adams
(1838-1918)

American writer and historian

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Henry Adams
(1838-1918)

American writer and historian

Always be a pOet, even in prOse.



Charles Baudelaire

France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.



Charles Baudelaire

Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge


- William Wordsworth

East blames West


West blames East
Each celebrating its peculiar feast!http://morocco.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=3824

"Split Conscience " is the title of the poem



MOHAMED ABU TALIB
( late President of MATE and English Department)

saidani miloudi

"There’s nothing truly free about it. All well-written free verse is metrically sound."



Harvey Stanbrough
(Beyond the Masks)
Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-nominated poet

abdennacer loukah a écrit:

Prose n'est que prose mais la poésie est coranique

IBn Arabi

tres fort comme citation.

merci mon ami

Ouiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii pour tout ce que Shelley dit même en délire

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.


Robert Frost

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.


Samuel McChord Crothers

Driss Boudhan a écrit:

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.


Samuel McChord Crothers

unfortunately it's the general trend today.thanks driss!

C'est sûr
Une personne qui écrit la prose et la prend pour poésie a toujours ce repentir inconscient qu'il n'est pas poète ..pour cela il y a des poètes entre guillemets qui mettent des rimes dans des textes qui ne reposent pas sur la métrique ...c'est une façon de duper le lecteur