Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
Plato

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
Rita Dove

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

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.
Charles Simic

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
Carl Sandburg

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.
William Hazlitt

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
Robert Frost

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
Percy Bysshe Shelley