Quoted in Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970), ch. 35
“He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.”
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
Lectures on the English Poets http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16209/16209.txt (1818), Lecture I, "On Poetry in General" <br class="br">Context: Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist
"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher
Andrew R. MacAndrew (trans.) A Precocious Autobiography (1963; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) p. 7.
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
Letter (19 December 1935) as published in Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966) edited by Holly Stevens, (No. 336)
“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.
“People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple.”
Rupi Kaur (1992) Canadian poet
On her work in “ The young ‘Instapoet’ Rupi Kaur: from social media star to bestselling writer” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/27/rupi-kaur-i-dont-fit-age-race-class-of-bestselling-poet-milk-and-honey in The Guardian (2017 May 27)
“Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”
Adrian Mitchell (1932–2008) British writer
Poems (1964), Preface.
