The month of January here at ClimbingSky this year is dedicated to Poetry. It is something I read every day, wrestle with most days, and has been a constant in my life since my teen years. For those counting, that is five decades now and counting.

I am not sure how many books of poetry, let alone poems, I have read in my life. And have no idea even how many poems I have written and discarded over the years.

My daily habit of reading at least one poem a day has become a spiritual exercise for me. It is as necessary as anything I do in the morning before I begin my day.

On previous blogs, I have done a lot of Poetry Reviews. During 2026, I will be resurrecting those reviews regularly on Thursdays as part of Throwback Thursdays.

For the month of January, I will be featuring poets, poems, and some thoughts about Poetry and the place of Poetry in this marred and imperfect world.

The best way I can think of to begin this month is to ground ourselves in what Poetry is, and how Poets interact with the world. Here are some great quotes that do just that.

Enjoy!

Quotes on Poetry and Poets

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.  ~W.B. Yeats

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

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.  ~John Keats

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.  ~Samuel Johnson

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.  ~Robert Frost

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.  ~T.S. Eliot

Poetry is life distilled.  ~Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself.  ~Carl Sandburg

There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.
~Robert Graves

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.  ~Robinson Jeffers

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.  ~Wallace Stevens

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.  ~Paul Valéry

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.  ~W.H. Auden

What is a Professor of Poetry?  How can poetry be professed?  ~W.H. Auden

To have great poets there must be great audiences too.  ~Walt Whitman

The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.  ~W.B. Yeats