“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

— Dylan Thomas

Last update Oct. 10, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poe…" by Dylan Thomas?

Dylan Thomas photo

Dylan Thomas50

Welsh poet and writer 1914–1953

Related quotes

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

“A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad — and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Answers to Questions," from Mid-Century American Poets, edited by John Ciardi, 1950 [p. 171]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“You must believe: a poem is a holy thing — a good poem, that is.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Poetry and Craft (1965)

“It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

General sources
Source: "The Poetry of Amy Lowell" in The Christian Science Monitor (16 May 1925)

“A word or a phrase or a line is not a poem. A poem is the exploration and shaping of an experience. A real poem demands intelligence, imagination, passion, understanding, experience and not least a knowledge of the craft.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

A Proper Gentleman, 1977

“To write good poems is the secret of brevity.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Simplicity http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21390/Simplicity <br class="br">From the poems written in English

“A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

The Paris Review, "Writers at Work: 4th series," interview with Peter Buckman and William Fifield (1969).
General sources

“Thereafter, when he himself was dead, he imagined that his poems would be published in some mysterious way, and the nation would read them for comfort in adversity, as it had read the poems of other poets before him; it was his highest wish that his poems could help those as unfortunate as himself to have patience to endure.</b”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

“But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“It’s a cauld barren blast that blaws nobody good.” - title of poem.”

John Lyon (poet) (1803–1889) Scottish Latter Day Saint poet and hymn writer

The Harp of Zion (1853)

Related topics