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the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see. -- Robert Penn Warren

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Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. - Salvatore Quasimodo

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Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry. -- Muriel Rukeyser

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Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. ~Carl Sandburg

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Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

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A poem should not mean / But be. ~Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica, 1926

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A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer.... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. ~E.B. White

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"It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things." ~Stephen Mallarme

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'Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.' ~Leonard Cohen

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"Poetry is what you find / in the dirt in the corner, / overhear on the bus, God / in the details, the only way / to get from here to there." --Elizabeth Alexander, Ars Poetica #100, I Believe. (a very interesting interview with Elizabeth in this link.)

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The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way . . . To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion -- all in one." -- John Ruskin

outside (non-haiku) reading

wow. just wow. this poem by Roethke and the way it resonates with me. can't help but share it . . . In a Dark Time