Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

poetry is a way of seeing and that a poet is not so much a person skilled with words as a person who recognizes the poetry that exists all the time all around us.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

Poetry is an attempt to penetrate the dense reality to find a place where the simplest things look as new as through the eyes of a child.

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.

What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.