Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher
New York Times (2 February 1986).
“Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for.”
As quoted in The Necessity of Art (1959) by Ernst Fischer, Ch. 1
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for." by Jean Cocteau?
Jean Cocteau123
French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager … 1889–1963Related quotes
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 43, November 11, 1947.
“What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer
Interview with Donald Hall in November 1960, pub.'Paris Review' The Art of Poetry, no 26 (1961)
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
Remarks at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (14 June 1956) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 895, Senate Speech Files, John F. Kennedy Papers, Pre-Presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library <br class="br">Pre-1960
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet
As quoted in C. F. Main & Peter J. Seng, Poems (Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), p. 3
“I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.”
Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian
Interview in The Review, published by Ian Hamilton (1972)
Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature
Nobel Lecture (8 December 1990)
Context: Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry. Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun.
“Poetry can be criticized only through poetry.”
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar
“Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #117
Context: Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.