„Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy.“

„For literary purposes, the art of writing poetry can be simply defined as: A creative act using language as a medium refined to an art.“

—  Vanna Bonta Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014) 1958 - 2014

The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)

„Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.“

—  Oscar Wilde Irish writer and poet 1854 - 1900

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

„One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.“

—  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, kniha Les Liaisons dangereuses

On peut citer de mauvais vers, quand ils sont d'un grand poète.
Letter 4: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_4
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

„You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality“

—  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel German poet, critic and scholar 1772 - 1829

Du wolltest die Philosophie zerstören, und die Poesie, um Raum zu gewinnen für die Religion und Moral, die du verkanntest: aber du hast nichts zerstören können als dich selber.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (1968) #90

„One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.“

—  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel German poet, critic and scholar 1772 - 1829

Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #62

„Poetry is not a branch of analytical philosophy. It is a primal, holistic kind of human communication. A poet needs innocence as much as knowledge, emotion as much as intelligence, vulnerability as much as rigor. A poet can become too smart for his or her own good and forget the childlike pleasures of sound and story, sense, and sensuality that poetry should provide. The challenge for a writer is to master the medium of poetry without losing that inner innocence.“

—  Dana Gioia American writer 1950

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

„Poetry is the most bodliy of arts, the medium of poetry is the column of breath rising from the diaphragm in the individual's chest to be shaped into meaning sounds inside the mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.“

—  Robert Pinsky American poet, editor, literary critic, academic. 1940

The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz

„Sandburg is unreadable today only because of the way he wrote. His prose was bad poetry, like his poetry.“

—  Clive James Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist 1939 - 2019

'On American Movie Critics' (New York Times Book Review, June 4, 2006)
Essays and reviews

„All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.“

—  Umberto Eco Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist 1932 - 2016

„one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid“

—  Charles Bukowski, kniha Love Is a Dog from Hell

Zdroj: Love Is a Dog from Hell

„There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in everything, everywhere we look.“

—  Ali Smith, Hotel World

Zdroj: Hotel World

„I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy“

—  Czeslaw Milosz Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator 1911 - 2004

„The warfare between poetry and philosophy certainly started with Plato, who was both poet and philosopher.“

—  John Hollander American poet 1929 - 2013

„I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.“

—  Henry David Thoreau, kniha Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

„Philosophy resembles poetry in being an art for enforcing meditation, for driving the mind inwards until it sinks into its Object.“

—  L. P. Jacks British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister 1860 - 1955

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

„Not to know the Bible is, in some ways, to be illiterate, to neglect the very roots of philosophy, art, architecture, literature, poetry and music.“

—  Chris Hedges, kniha American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America

Zdroj: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Chapter One: Faith

„Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility.“

—  T.S. Eliot 20th century English author 1888 - 1965

Zdroj: Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, T.S. Eliot. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

„We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.“

—  Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist 1844 - 1900

„Critics of visual arts and of music describe in words — that is to say, a system of signs other than those made by brushes on canvas or chisels into stone or notes of music — those characteristics of painting or sculpture or music which can be described or analysed. Visual artists and composers can disregard critics on the ground that the medium of verbal criticism bears so indirect a relation to the medium in which they make something. Poets are in a different situation. With the development of so-called scientific methods of criticism they are made ever conscious that criticism of poetry is in the same medium of work as the art which they practise. “Close analysis” is useful to critics and readers. But for the poet there is the danger of disintegration of poetry into paraphrase, examination of technique, influences, all analysed in the language of criticism.“

—  Stephen Spender English poet and man of letters 1909 - 1995

"Tradition-Bound Literature and Traditionless Painting"
The Struggle of the Modern (1963)