Science is for those who learn, poetry is for those who know.

I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.

We have a motto at Naropa: 'Keep the world safe for poetry.' It's humorous but has some real bite to it. If the world is safe for poetry, it can be safe for many other things.

There was no market for poetry about trauma, abuse, loss, love, and healing through the lens of a Punjabi-Sikh immigrant woman.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.

Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.

I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with poetry around eight years old, but not through literature. Instead, it came through hip-hop lyrics and my obsession with reading liner notes. Queen Latifah's 'Black Reign' is the album that stands out the most.

One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being violent or obscure.

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.

Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

I go to a lot of writers conferences and literary festivals that tend to be in college towns or cities, and I'm eager to see what happens if those same texts and those same questions move outside of those areas to smaller rural communities where there are surely people who read and love poetry.

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

I have been writing poetry since 1975. My first poetry book was published in 1986.