poetry meme

I got meme-tagged by Stu on A Collection Of Thoughs, this meme originated at They Shoot Poets - Don't They?

Give us at least 10 quotations pertaining to poetry - from 10 different writers &/or poets which best coincide with your philosophy vis a vis ars poetica. They can be posthumous or otherwise. The order is not important - unless it is to you.

"If the number ten is too daunting, go for less." Well this did seem kind of daunting, I love poetry but have not yet really dug in as deep as I would like, I do have my favourites though and have decided to give as many as I could think of and add more as they come. Some of the quotations are from the same writers and the order is important, I suppose.

. . .Let me not dare, here or anywhere, for my own purposes, or any purposes, to attempt the definition of Poetry, nor answer the question what it is. Like Religion, Love, Nature, while those terms are indispensable, and we all give a sufficiently accurate meaning to them, in my opinion no definition that has ever been made sufficiently encloses the name Poetry; nor can any rule of convention ever so absolutely obtain but some great exception may arise and disregard and overturn it.

Walt Whitman

. . .The great function of poetry is precisely this: to repair to the material of experience, seizing hold of the reality of sensation and fancy beneath the surface of conventional ideas, and then out of that living but indefinite material to build new structures, richer, finer, fitter to the primary tendencies of our nature, truer to the ultimate possibilities of the soul.

George Santayana

. . .It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth.

Edgar Allan Poe

. . . No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves.

Amy Lowell

. . .The stuff of language is words, and the sensuous material of words is sound; if language therefore is to be made perfect, its materials must be made beautiful by being themselves subjected to a measure, and endowed with a form.

George Santayana

. . .A writer at best is an artist. The artist feeds on his own mind and passions to prove to himself the something else that he creates. That thing, his art, is hard to define; it even works with this same principle in mind. A great artist gives from himself what is himself. The true artist and his work are inseparable.

William Sutton

. . . The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted, Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

Walt Whitman

. . .They say, "Lies have taken office. "They say, "Decorate the streets with truth."

Stu Hatton

...Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion, poetry is not an expression of personality but an escape from personality, but only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

T.S Eliot