The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

Rap is poetry to music, like beatniks without beards and bongos.

I really enjoy English and poetry and writing classes.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.