Top 74 Poetry Short Quotes
#1. Poetry vs. Prose
One difference of course
is the length of the line.
And some people suppose
that prose doesn't rhyme.
But I have a theory
that's more like a question:
If prose is lengthy fiction
is poetry short suggestion?
Daniel Klawitter
#2. This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey)
Kellie Elmore
#3. Veins of ivy scale stones,
find footholds but
the caretaker cuts
earth short, peels
creepers from Cotswold
rock and props the dead
head to head so they won't
topple like drunks
on their moss-soft shadows.
Jalina Mhyana
#4. When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.
Elizabeth McCracken
#5. There are a couple of utterly important rules to writing anything, whether it's a novel, a short story or a collection of poetry. And they're really the only rules.
1: Quit talking about it and start.
2: Focus and finish it.
Nicholas Trandahl
#6. When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.
Mario Batali
#7. I read usually in the morning, in my kitchen at breakfast - a short reading time, usually poetry. I read in bed every night. I usually get in bed pretty early with a book, and I read until I can't prop my eyes open anymore - sometimes rather late.
Sue Monk Kidd
#8. You said that it was because almost held failed potential. That it represented our ability to be just not good enough, that we had come to the brink of something beautiful but fell short so many times we crafted a word for it.
Bianca Phipps
#9. A short story relies on those values that make poetry and jazz what they are: tension, rhythms, inner beat, into unforeseen within foreseen parameters
Julio Cortazar
#10. A song is a short composition for voice and instruments. It is a piece of sung poetry set to music. It is usually only a few minutes long.
Russell Smith
#12. The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#13. I frowned. "Are you sure about this? It's a bit short." "So? It's poetry, not dick size.
J.L. Merrow
#14. I don't write poetry or short stories. I don't like to write articles usually. I tend to really only want to be focused on writing novels. It's one of the real advantages I've had over the years. I've only been good at one thing. It helps to be limited.
Markus Zusak
#15. Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.
F. Sionil Jose
#16. Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true.
Lafcadio Hearn
#17. Though what is 'Romeo and Juliet' after all?" he added after a short pause. "The beauty of poetry and holiness of love are simply the roses under which they try to hide its rottenness. Romeo is just the same sort of animal as all the rest of us.
Anton Chekhov
#18. I want to write songs with complete sentences. I almos have this obsession with short-changing words. I would never be so pretentious to say that my lyrics are poetry ... Poems are poems. Song lyrics are for songs.
Ben Gibbard
#19. There's little question that short stories, like poetry, don't get the respect they deserve in the culture - but what can you do? Like Canute, one cannot fight the sea, you have to go with your love, and hope one day, things change.
Junot Diaz
#21. I don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.
Steve Earle
#22. How frail the bloom, how short the stay
That terminates us all!
Today we flourish green and gay,
Like leaves tomorrow fall.
John Clare
#23. As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.
Daniel Radcliffe
#24. Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.
Adam McKay
#25. Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time.
Mary Karr
#26. To them, eternal life begins
And God Himself shall wipe away all tears.
Timothy Salter
#27. Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.
Ben Lerner
#28. If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?
Ryan Goodrich
#30. The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays ... is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again.
Ray Bradbury
#31. The second was some rather bad poetry, but it was short, and I forced my way through by gritting my teeth and occasionally closing one eye so as not to damage the entirety of my brain.
Patrick Rothfuss
#33. I'm a poet. And then I put the poetry in the drama. I put it in short stories, and I put it in the plays. Poetry's poetry. It doesn't have to be called a poem, you know.
Tennessee Williams
#34. Short stories and some short novels are close to poetry
with the fewest words they capture the essence of a situation, of a human being. It's like trying to pin down the eternal moment.
Gina Berriault
#35. Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.
Evangeline Lilly
#36. Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.
Jeremy Bentham
#37. One clear moment, one of trance
One missed step, one perfect dance
One missed shot, one and only chance
Life is all...but one fleeting glance.
Sanober Khan
#38. A good story is like a well-placed punch: quick, effective, and impossible to ignore.
R.L. Raymond
#39. Mountains clothed in snow
Robed in white against blue skies
Mirrored in the lake.
Timothy Salter
#40. I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that.
Samantha Morton
#41. A short poem from my book:
Perspective
Of course
there is a hell
she said
and it has
an observation deck;
so I may
stand and wave
to all those kind
souls below
who warned me
I would go there.
Michelle Hartman
#42. She was mined for the children
in her, one daughter, then another,
a short seam, quick to clay,
and not a single son to save them.
Robert Wrigley
#43. For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.
William H Gass
#44. I've been writing since I was sixteen. At first, I wrote mostly short stories and poetry. The first thing I ever had published was a poem about a football game. It was printed in my local newspaper.
Jerry Spinelli
#45. I've never written poetry. I'm not a poet, but I think the nearest you get is either the short story or the novella, in that you can't waste a word. There is no hiding place: everything's got to be seen to relate, and the prose counts.
Susan Hill
#46. I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
William Faulkner
#47. The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a novel, with its requirements of concentration and economy.
James Lasdun
#49. I began writing early - very, very early ... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.
Wole Soyinka
#50. I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I've always read poetry; I've always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.
Lorde
#51. Free from ivory-tower
the pencil twirls
across the footpath
Santosh Kalwar
#52. Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won't.
Dorianne Laux
#53. [Short Talk on the Sensation of Airplane Takeoff] Well you know I wonder, it could be love running toward my life with its arms up yelling let's buy it what a bargain!
Anne Carson
#54. I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.
Tobias Wolff
#55. THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD Experience Card's full versatility, from science fiction to fantasy, from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction.
Orson Scott Card
#56. There is no poetry or song.
There is no short or long.
There is only you.
Debasish Mridha
#57. Glad to know about all of you who care about books, including or especially poetry. I'm a much published writer/editor of 12 books (medical nonfiction, literary novels, mysteries) and much short work, inc. prize-winning pieces.
Carole Spearin McCauley
#58. Life is short - while we speak it flies; enjoy, then, the present, and forget the future; such is the moral of ancient poetry, a graceful and a wise moral - indulged beneath a southern sky, and all deserving, the phrase applied to it - the philosophy of the garden.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#59. Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.
Alice Fulton
#60. Walk the midway and hear the carnival barker.
Come see the freak named after his deceased father.
Come see the prince who wants to abdicate his throne.
Come see the son whose name is carved on a gravestone.
Sherman Alexie
#63. I thought a bit of poetry might be interesting - I even write a few lines myself. I composed a short poem for my mum's 70th birthday recently. When I recited it I saw the glint of a tear in her eye ... although I guess it wasn't the quality of the poetry was that making her cry!
Iain Dowie
#64. It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.
Lafcadio Hearn
#65. One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.
Marina Tsvetaeva
#66. Sure, we thought the acres
That we tilled were sacred,
But how could we have known
That wheat can haunt like ghosts
Sherman Alexie
#68. Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.
Ron Rash
#69. I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
Erica Jong
#71. McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry.
Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don't worry, sir - I used to suffer from short stories.
McGough: Really? When?
Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time ...
Graham Chapman
#72. Poetry forces a writer to condense and crystallise his thoughts and often represents a short cut to truths unsuspected by the author himself.
Felix Dennis
#73. I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.
P.J. Harvey
#74. It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.
Edgar Allan Poe
