Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work. James Fenton Poetry
I can't understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian, but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry, as do the hundreds, not a mere roomful, of poetry lovers in the audience. F. Sionil Jose Poetry
Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry. Edward Hirsch Poetry
It would probably surprise people to know that I'm interested in wildlife. I read a lot of poetry, too. Sean Bean Poetry
Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are. Julio Cortazar Poetry
No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it. Felix Dennis Poetry
It is certain that at certain times talent entirely overcomes thought or poetry. John Singer Sargent Poetry
From the beginnings of literature, poets and writers have based their narratives on crossing borders, on wandering, on exile, on encounters beyond the familiar. The stranger is an archetype in epic poetry, in novels. The tension between alienation and assimilation has always been a basic theme. Jhumpa Lahiri Poetry
Poetry is really about your mental state or intellectual, and where you are, and you're trying to evoke that, explain it to yourself, whatever, you're trying to dig into it, analyse yourself. Jonathan Galassi Poetry
I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band - just for fun - when I was 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish. Gloria Estefan Poetry
Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear. Helen Dunmore Poetry
I thought it would be a funny concept to publish a book about stand-up comedy with Faber, the poetry publisher, and to apply to stand-up the same sort of weight of annotation that you would to a classic work of literature, an epic poem. I thought that would be funny. Stewart Lee Poetry
Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry. Romesh Gunesekera Poetry
Everybody interprets things differently with their own perception, and I want poetry to pull out of them their own feelings. John Trudell Poetry