Poetry Quotes

There's been a thing going around where tagged poet bloggers share at least ten quotes about poetry. Nick Bruno did far more than his share -- here, here, and here. I haven't been tagged, which is probably just as well, at this point. Favourites from his lists include

“Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.”
--Thomas Gray

Poetry; Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.
--Marianne Moore

Always be a poet, even in prose.
--Charles Baudelaire

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.
--e. e. cummings

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
--Robert Frost

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
--Randall Jarrell
(How about once or twice?)

Poetry isn't written from the idea down. It's written from the phrase, line and stanza up, which is different from what your teacher taught you to do in school.
--Margaret Atwood

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
--Edmond de Goncourt

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.
--Christopher Morley

Interesting that he didn't include that too oft quoted thing from Emily D. about poetry taking the top of your head off. Maybe that's why she never went outside: all that exposed brain was pretty unsightly.