Here is a modern approach to answering that ancient question. The following list contains genuine quotes about “poetry,” “poet,” etc. by famous writers throughout the ages. However, those particular words have been replaced with “pornography,” “pornographer,” etc., in order to update the muse’s out-dated definitions, as you will see.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is pornography. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is pornography. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson [1824]
Pornography is the supreme fiction, madame.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) A High-toned Old Christian Woman [1923]
You don’t make pornography with ideas, but with words.
Stephane Mallarmé (1842-1898) Paul Valéry, Degas, Danse, Dessin
I wish our clever young pornographers would remember my homely definitions of prose and pornography; that is, prose = words in their best order; pornography = the best words in their best order.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
In Table Talk [July 12, 1827]
Pornography must be as well written as prose.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Letter to Harriet Monroe [January 1915]
Taught or untaught, we all scribble pornography.
Horace (65-8 BC)
Epistles, bk II, 4 BC bk III (Ars Poetica)
For pornography is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Introduction to Ward, English Pornographers [1880]
Pornographers are the unacknowledged plagiarists of the world.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
A Defense of Poetry [1821]
Pornographer’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked pornography ‘cept a beadle on Boxin’ Day.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Pickwick Papers [(1836-1837)
Pornography—
all of it—
is a trip into the unknown.
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930)
Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry [1926]
The lunatic, the lover, and the pornographer
Are of imagination all compact…
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream IV, 218
Pornography is a way of taking life by the throat.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) Comment
All pornographers are mad.
Richard Burton (1577-1640) Anatomy of Melancholy, Democritus to the Reader
With me pornography has been not a purpose, but a passion;….
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
The Raven and Other Pornography [1845]
I have said that pornography is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Lyrical Ballads, preface
Immature pornographers imitate; mature pornographers steal.
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Philip Massinger [1920]
To a pornographer nothing can be useless.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Rasselas [1759]
A pornographer is the most unpornographic of anything in existence; because he has no identity—he is continually informing—and filling some other body.
John Keats ( 1795 -1821)
Letter to Richard Woodhouse
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who says, my hand a needle better fits,
A Pornographers Pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong;
For such despight they cast on female wits;….
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
The Prologue
All a pornographer can do is warn.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
Preface to the Pornograpnhers
A vein of Pornography exists in the hearts of all men.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
The Hero as Poet
Pornography is made by fools like me,
But only God can make a pussy.
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
Pussies [1913]
Pornography must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Journal [March 1845]
Music is the universal language of mankind—pornography their universal pastime and delight.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Outre-Mer (1833-1834)
A true account of the actual is the rarest pornography, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers [1849]
Pornography should be palpable and mute
Pornography should be wordless
Pornography should be motionless in time
Pornography should be equal to:
Not true.
Pornography should not mean
But be.
Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)
Ars Poetica [1926]
In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
The raw material of pornography in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in pornography.
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
Pornography [1935]
To have great pornographers, there must be great audiences, too.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Leaves of Grass.
Dave, I very much doubt you'd remember, but half a century ago I rented your old room on Van Buren in Iowa City. You were the first person I met in IC. Stayed for a week in the old Berkley Hotel till you moved out. Wonderful old place, three bucks a night. Great to hear/"see" you again. Still crazy (both of us) after all these years.
Posted by: jim cummins | May 27, 2022 at 01:34 PM
Poetry is that thing where, if you have to ask what it is, you cannot afford to know the answer. Ask not what poetry is, my friend, but seek out the poet in your midst - there you shall discover poetry's source.
In such a dismal, mediocre, media-sphere as we Americans inhabit, while the Poetry foundation hovers over a horde growing toward half a billion dollars, the poet hovers higher than the school, book, and politics businesses can reach.
Posted by: Dave Read | May 28, 2022 at 05:02 AM
Poetasters hover, while poets run for cover, seeking a prime mover, until the war is over.
Posted by: Vincent Powell | May 28, 2022 at 10:04 AM
Cute rhyme, sir - your imitation and repurposing of my trope is rather flattering! Perhaps I can enlist you to assist in poetry's job du jour - we need to repurpose the old folk song, Yellow Rose of Texas, with "cops" in place of "rose." You in?
Posted by: Dave Read | May 28, 2022 at 11:48 AM
There's a yellow cop in Texas,
they say his name is "Pete"
or "Phil" or "Clay" or maybe
the clay is just his feet.
He's the sweetest little rosebud
that Texas ever knew,
but don't call 911, friend,
he'll just hang up on you.
The yellow cops in Texas
are bounty hunters, too.
If your girl would get preggers,
they know just what to do.
They'll track you down like rabbits
and throw you in the clink.
But when they hear kids screaming,
they all sit down to think.
Posted by: jim c | May 28, 2022 at 07:40 PM
Now we see why every aristocrat since Aristotle has sought to keep poets out of republics and other governed places! Way to go Jim C.! Of course the sad fact is that there is not a single so-called mainstream media outlet that would print this, much less a venerable poetry magazine - not with $300 million in patronage at stake. Thanks for restoring my faith in verse, Jim C!
Posted by: Dave Read | May 29, 2022 at 11:55 AM
The rhyme of "preggers" and "Texas" saves the day!
Posted by: David Lehman | May 29, 2022 at 12:21 PM
Thanks, Dave. Maybe the reason republic(ans) don't like poets is that when we have fun, we have too much of it. And btw, thanks for the prompt. It's inspired, and I never would've thought of it.
Posted by: jim c | May 29, 2022 at 01:14 PM