Poetry... What is it good for?

To have great poets there must be great audiences too.

Walt Whitman

Poetry is not an expression of the party line.  It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. 

Allen Ginsberg

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
		Robert Frost
		We don't read and write poetry because it's cute.  We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.  And the human race is filled with passion.  And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.   Dead Poet's Society
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.
		Plato

All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
		William Wordsworth

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
		Percy Bysshe Shelley