Quotations for the Week: On Poetry

(Poetry Word Cloud from ReadWritePoem.org)

I have spent much of today (when not in church) preparing for the second week of the Playing with Poetry Workshop at Brave Writer. This week we're tackling Visual Poetry--concrete poems, shape poems, acrostic poems, cinquain poems, and diamante poems. It's going to be a full and fun week!

So as I revised my lessons and posted them for the class, a few quotations about poetry were running through my brain, and I thought I'd share one or two with you today.

"Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know."
--Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest

and, this one, which I quote in the signature of my teaching e-mails:

"Poetry is life distilled."
--Gwendolyn Brooks

So enjoy a taste of poetry today. If you don't already, I highly recommend subscribing to the Poem-a-Day e-mails from the Academy of American Poets. Weekdays usually send you some brand-new poems so that one can be on the cutting edge of what is fresh and new in the world of poetry, and weekend e-mails usually rely on the classics; today I received a poem by Robert Browning in my inbox.

And that's a wonderful way to begin my day!

Listening to that still, small poetic voice,