“I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.”

“Poetry can be written only because it has been written.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

“Poetry is the subject of the poem,
From this the poem issues and
To this returns. Between the two,
Between issue and return, there is
An absence in reality,
Things as they are. Or so we say.
But are these separate?”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

“I'm not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I mean, I don't think you get a true picture of people without it in writing… It's a kind of poetry, it's an emotional poetry, and, to bring it back to the literary scene, I don't think anything is true that doesn't have it, that doesn't have poetry in it.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

“Poetry may be written on paper, but it’s an oral art. A good poem satisfies the ear. It creates a story or picture that grabs you.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

“What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

“Poetry is the most bodliy of arts, the medium of poetry is the column of breath rising from the diaphragm in the individual's chest to be shaped into meaning sounds inside the mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

“Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Poetry is a subset of a Cosmos, which in itself, is a poem.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)