Identify Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes. — Tracy K. Smith

How are you supposed to know what to read next? This is the question that keeps us up at night, so at Day One our mission is to feed an audience of literature-hungry, time-constrained readers like you with a weekly lineup of talented authors, poets, and artists that we believe you will love. And if we can identify some of the next generation of literary stars, and cultivate an appreciation for transformative poetry and fiction, then frankly we will sleep better at night. — Carmen Johnson

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds. — Dorianne Laux

I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light. — Mahmoud Darwish

The concept of an author, the single creative person who gives the text 'authority', only comes later in this period. Most Old English poetry is anonymous, even though names which are in no way comparable, such as Caedmon and Deor, are used to identify single texts. Caedmon and Deor might indeed be as mythical as Grendel, might be the originators of the texts which bear their names, or, in Deor's case only, the persona whose first-person voice narrates the poem. Only Cynewulf 'signed' his works, anticipating the role of the 'author' by some four hundred years. — Ronald Carter

the only thing
required
to be
a woman
is to
identify
as one.

- period, end of story. — Amanda Lovelace

I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior. — Diane Wakoski