“Poetry must be read to be poetry. It may be that one reader is all that I deserve. If this is so, I want that reader to be you.”

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Poetry must be read to be poetry. It may be that one reader is all that I deserve. If this is so, I want that reader to…" by William Saroyan?
William Saroyan photo
William Saroyan 190
American writer 1908–1981

Related quotes

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library... Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Poetry" (1977)

Neil deGrasse Tyson photo

“Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

At an interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy on January 29th, 2010.
2010s

“Spoken Word poetry is an art form that fits me well because it enables me to bring all the layers of who I am into one space — A reader, writer, and performer…”

On his preferred poetry style in “Prose Interviews London Poet Raymond Antrobus” https://medium.com/prose-matters/prose-interviews-london-poet-raymond-antrobus-c0e1fdf720b9 in Medium Magazine (2016 Mar 30)

Wallace Stevens photo

“…modern poetry is necessarily obscure; if the reader can’t get it, let him eat Browning…”

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

“Changes of Attitude and Rhetoric in Auden’s Poetry”, p. 149
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

John Keats photo

“Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance".”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

Dr. Seuss photo

“You have to be a speedy reader because there’s so so much to read.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Related topics