# Quote — Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets

> Poetry is a language with a shape

- Author: [Michael Schmidt](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-schmidt.md)
- Book: [Lives of the Poets](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-schmidt/lives-of-the-poets.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Schmidt_(poet)#Lives_of_the_Poets,_Phoenix,_1988) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-schmidt/lives-of-the-poets/poetry-is-a-language

## More from this book

> A living poem can energise another poem at five hundred years distance, or across the other side of the world.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-schmidt/lives-of-the-poets/a-living-poem.md)

> What matters in poetry is form, how words work together, the sounds and silences their combinations make. The ordered effects they produce on the attentive hearer.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-schmidt/lives-of-the-poets/what-matters-in-poetry.md)

> We read with our ears

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-schmidt/lives-of-the-poets/we-read-with.md)