Poetry Quote by C.D. Wright — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“Poetry seems especially like nothing else so much as itself. Poetry is not like, it is the very lining of the inner life.”

“Nobody reads poetry, we are told at every inopportune moment. I read poetry. I am somebody. I am the people, too. It can be allowed that an industrious quantity of contemporary American poetry is consciously written for a hermetic constituency; the bulk is written for the bourgeoisie, leaving a lean cut for labor. Only the hermetically aimed has a snowball's chance in hell of reaching its intended ears. One proceeds from this realization. A staggering figure of vibrant, intelligent people can and do live without poetry, especially without the poetry of their time. This figure includes the unemployed, the rank and file, the union brass, banker, scientist, lawyer, doctor, architect, pilot, and priest. It also includes most academics, most of the faculty of the humanities, most allegedly literary editors and most allegedly literary critics. They do so--go forward in their lives, toward their great reward, in an engulfing absence of poetry--without being perceived or perceiving themselves as hobbled or deficient in any significant way. It is nearly true, though I am often reminded of a Transtromer broadside I saw in a crummy office building in San Francisco:”

“I am suggesting that the radical of poetry lies not in the”

“Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.”

“الصبيةُ الذين افترشوا طفولتي”

“It's better to swim in the sea below”

“A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.”

“Fellow-wanderer,”

“someone's sent”

“I will follow you,”