Jacques Prevért quote: “Poetry, it's one of the most pretty nicknames we give to life.”

“Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

Wise-saws : or, Sam Slick in Search of a Wife (1856), p. 179.

“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?"”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.
" Education by Poetry http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/edbypo.html", speech delivered at Amherst College and subsequently revised for publication in the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly (February 1931)
General sources

“I was the first one probably in writing to use a nickname, Mickey, and it stuck.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

“If life is an illusion it's a pretty painful one.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

“Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”

Adrian Mitchell (1932–2008) British writer

Poems (1964), Preface.

“There is much poetry for which most of us do not care, but with a little trouble when we are young we may find one or two poets whose poetry, if we get to know it well, will mean very much to us and become part of ourselves…”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)
Context: There is much poetry for which most of us do not care, but with a little trouble when we are young we may find one or two poets whose poetry, if we get to know it well, will mean very much to us and become part of ourselves... The love for such poetry which comes to us when we are young will not disappear as we get older; it will remain in us, becoming an intimate part of our own being, and will be an assured source of strength, consolation, and delight.

“for our country we give our blood, we give our life……but we will not give our motherland to any one.”

frooti

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
Context: Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
Context: For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Education by Poetry http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/edbypo.html", speech delivered at Amherst College and subsequently revised for publication in the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly (February 1931)
1930s

“My life, the most truthful one, is unrecognizable, extremely interior, and there is no single word that gives it meaning.”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

The Hour of the Star (1977)

“Poetry, it's one of the most pretty nicknames we give to life.”

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