“Human life can be lived like a poem.”
Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 32
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Lin Yutang67
Chinese writer 1895–1976Related quotes
Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet
Lives of the Poets, Phoenix, 1988
“or that writing a poem you can read to no one
is like dancing in the dark.”
Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet
Source: The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
of not wanting to write a preface for his first volume of verse, The Rage for the Lost Penny (1940); “A Note on Poetry”, p. 47
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
“Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”
Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems
"Trees" - This poem was first published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 2 (August 1913). The first two lines were first written down on the 2nd of February 1913.
Trees and Other Poems (1914)
Context: I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ <br class="br"> A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday
Ryōkan (1758–1831) Japanese Buddhist monk
Variant translation:<br>Who says my poems are poems?<br>My poems are not poems.<br>After you know my poems are not poems,<br>Then we can begin to discuss poetry! <br class="br"> "Zen Poetics of Ryokan" in Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry (Summer 2006) http://www.hermitary.com/articles/ryokan_poetics.html <br class="br">Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf : Zen Poems of Ryokan (1993)
“A poem is a living organism.”
Ataol Behramoğlu (1942) Turkish writer
The Poet's Poetic Responsibility (2012)