What is Poetry? A Poem is both a system of rules, and a system of their violation. Terry Eagleton All bad art springs from genuine feeling. Oscar Wilde

What is Poetry? A poem should not mean, but be. If pleasure is not an important function of the poem, why did Wordsworth mention the word “pleasure” forty-two times in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads? Mary Oliver A poem should not mean, but be. Archibald MacLeish

What is Poetry? Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes origin in emotion recollected in tranquility…poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.” William Wordsworth

What is Poetry? The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. Samuel Johnson A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. Robert Frost

What is Poetry? Real poetry doesn’t say anything—it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you…and that’s why poetry appeals to me so much—because it’s so eternal. As long as there are people, they can remember words and combinations of words…

…nothing else can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs …nothing else can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs. No one can remember an entire novel. No one can describe a film, a piece of sculpture, a painting, but so long as there are human beings, songs and poetry can continue…

…if my poetry aims to achieve anything, it is to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel. Jim Morrison

What is Poetry? Yippee! I’m a poet and I know it. Hope I don’t blow it! Anything I can sing, I call song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem. Bob Dylan