Seeking answers on the role and purpose of poets and poetry in our lives? Delve into the following quotes about poets and poetry for insights.

1. “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” —Carl Sandburg
2. “Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.” —Mahmoud Darwish
3. “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat” —Robert Frost
4. “All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, ‘Something’s wrong, let’s change it for the better’”—Sonia Sanchez
5. “A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.” ―H. L. Mencken
6. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”— Percy Bysshe Shelley
7. “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” —Plato
8. “A poet’s work … to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep.” —Salman Rushdie
9. “The poet is the priest of the invisible.” — Wallace Stevens
10. “What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.” —Soren Kierkegaard
11. “My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.” —John Lennon
12. “A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.” —James Dickey
13. “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.” —Abraham Maslow
14. ““All a poet can do today is warn.” —Wilfred Owen
15. “I’m a political poet – let us say a ‘human’ poet, a poet that’s concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that’s what I’m going to use.” —Juan Felipe Herrera
16. “Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.” —Alice Walker
17. “If a poet does not tell the truth about time, his or her work will not survive it. Past or present, there is a human dimension to time, human voices within it, and human griefs ordained by it.” — Eavan Boland
18. “Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.” —Amanda Gorman
19. “For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.” —Oscar Wilde
20. “The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.” —Charles Baudelaire
21. “Poetry is – it’s an art form, but, to me, it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument. It’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that’s a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.” — Amanda Gorman
22. “Every contemporary poet is a door to another poet.” —Terrance Hayes
23. “There is nothing settled about a poet’s identity. The becoming doesn’t stop because the being has been achieved. They proceed together, attached in ways that are hard to be exact about.” —Eavan Boland
24. “Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.” —T. S. Eliot
25. “Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.” —W. H. Auden
26. “Only the poet can look beyond the detail and see the whole picture.” —Helen Hayes
27. “If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.” —Nikki Giovanni
28. “Poetry is a place where both grief and grace can live, where rage can be explored and examined, not simply exploited.” — Ada Limon
29. “Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.”
    — Stephen Spender
30. “All cultures and peoples turn to poetry during times of celebration, transformation, and challenge—those times when ordinary language cannot carry meaning beyond our understanding.” — Joy Harjo 

County Fairs

• Alameda County Fair entry form deadline due May 15th Poetry is under Fine Arts. Fair is June 14- July 7th https://annual.alamedacountyfair.com/competitions/
• Solano County Fair entry form deadline due May 22nd. Fair is June 13-16 Poetry is under Fine Arts. https://scfair.org/compete/
• Marin County Fair entry form deadline due May 31st. Fair is July 3-7. Poetry is under Creative Writing. https://marinfair.org/exhibits/

Special Events

• Tonight, April 25, 7 to 8:30 p.m.
  Alibi Bookshop – 624 Marin St. in Vallejo – The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal – James Crews, editor of two best-selling poetry anthologies, “How to Love the World” and “The Path to Kindness,” presents an all-new collection of highly accessible poems on the theme of celebrating moments of wonder and peace in everyday life.
  
• Our Vallejo Poets Laureate Kathleen Herrmann and Jacalyn Eyvonne will be reading at the Earth Daze Festival in Vallejo on Saturday, April 27th from 12:15 to 1:00 PM. 

• They will also be participating in the Climate Change Ekphrastic Exhibit, Temple Arts Loft, May 25, June 1, 8, 15, 22 from 1:00-2:00 PM.
• They are featuring at the McCune on Sunday May 26 from 2 to 4 PM. Lower level of the JFK Library.

http://vallejopoetrysociety.org/happy-earth-day/

Open mics

• Poetry Speakeasy at Chris Club meets twice a month every other Monday at 656 Benicia Road, Vallejo at 7 PM. Due to the nature of the venue, participants must be 21 or older.

• Monday, May 6th, 2024
• Monday, May 20th, 2024

Benicia First Tuesday Poets meet on the first Tuesday of the month at 150 East L Street, Benicia. Come for snacks and schmoozing at 6:15. Show starts at 6:30 PM. 

• Tuesday, May 7th, 2024

Poetry in Notion has been cancelled.

Poetry by the Bay meets on the 4th Wednesday of the month at 51 Daniels Avenue, Vallejo at 7 PM. Visit poetrybythebay.com for details.

• Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024

Art Beat Poetry Hour on KZCT 89.5 FM meets on the 4th Thursdays at 1026 Georgia Street, Vallejo at 10:15 AM. Poets take turns reading their work live on the air. Airtime is 10:30 AM.

• Thursday, April 25th, 2024
• Thursday, May 23rd, 2024

http://vallejopoetrysociety.org/open-mics-in-solano-county-in-2024/

Fairfield

Fairfield Poet Laureate Suzanne Bruce, in collaboration with the Fairfield-Suisun City Visual Arts Association, invites you to write a poem to an art piece from the exhibit “Into the Light.” Art Reception and Poetry Reading is on May 25, 4-6 p.m. at the Solano Town Center Gallery at 1350 Travis Blvd., #D-8, Fairfield, (inside the Solano Town Center Mall). Art can be seen at the Gallery : Gallery opened Wednesday- Sunday 11 am – 6 pm or at  Solano Town Center Gallery | fsvaa (fvaa-arts.org).Send Suzanne your poem in a word doc or pdf with picture of art on the poem by 10 AM on May 25. For more information, email [email protected]. Please keep your poem to 42 lines or less.

Fairfield Poet Laureate Suzanne Bruce invites you to an afternoon of poetry. Upon Words, with two inspiring Bay Area poets, Rosa Lane and Erin Rodini. Open mic to follow. Event takes place on Saturday, May 11, 2024, 3-5 pm, at the Fairfield Civic Center Library, 1150 Kentucky Street.

https://www.fairfield.ca.gov/government/poet-laureate

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