Lothlorien Poetry Journal Volume 19 – The Rhapsody of Words features the best fantasy and contemporary poetry and fiction from over 70 internationally renowned poets and fiction authors. Join them on this journey through life and its myriad relationships, real and imagined, where folklore, romance, realism and dystopia mingle and merge casting light on secrets and shadows. “Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.” — Carl Sandburg, from The Atlantic, March 1923. “It is a test [that] genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” — T. S. Eliot, from the essay "Dante." “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” — William Wordsworth, from "Preface to Lyrical Ballads." “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” — William Butler Yeats, from PER AMICA SILENTIA LUNAE. Poetry is the deification of reality. – Edith Sitwell Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. – Kahlil Gibran To find beauty in ugliness is the province of the poet. – Thomas Hardy Poetry is the only art people haven’t yet learnt to consume like soup. – W. H. Auden Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. – Robert Frost Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. – Carl Sandburg Poetry is life distilled. – Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. – Edgar Allan Poe There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away, / Nor any Coursers like a Page / Of prancing Poetry. – Emily Dickinson If you tell a novelist, ‘Life’s not like that’, he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, ‘No, but I am.’ – Philip Larkin As a poet I would say everything should be able to come into a poem but I can’t put toothbrushes in a poem. I really can’t. – Sylvia Plath