Poem Quotes

• Mata Hari / Exotic Dancer

The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.

• Horace / Poet

Every old poem is sacred.

• Michael Franti / Poet

Every single soul is a poem.

• Eric Whitacre / Composer

A really good poem is full of music.

• David Carradine / Actor

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

• Adrienne Rich / Poet

The moment of change is the only poem.

• Paul Valery / Poet

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

• Walt Whitman / Poet

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

• Rita Dove / Poet

I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

• Michael Madsen / Actor

I wrote a poem on my leg once, on the skin.

• Robert Frost / Poet

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

• Paul Engle / Poet

The way to praise a poet is to write a poem.

• C. K. Williams / Poet

A dark poem is meant to redeem the dark part.

• Anatole Broyard / Writer

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

• Mary Karr / Poet

Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.

• Sherman Alexie / Poet

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.

• Stephane Mallarme / Poet

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

• Joshua Cohen

A poem is bound by language, but a poetics is not.

• Tahar Ben Jelloun / Writer

I read a poem every night, as others read a prayer.

• Mark Strand / Poet

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

• Michael Ondaatje / Novelist

I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.

• Tony D'souza / Novelist

I should be writing a poem every morning but I'm not.

• Joyce Kilmer / Writer

I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

• Beck / Musician

I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.

• Siri Hustvedt / Novelist

I published my first poem in 'The Paris Review' in 1980.

• Jose Bergamin / Writer

The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.

• Howard Nemerov / Poet

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

• John Ashbery / Poet

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.

• Liam Neeson / Actor

When I see great boxers, it's like reading a wonderful poem.

• Bob Dylan / Musician

A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.

• Charles Simic / Poet

Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.

• Gore Vidal / Writer

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

• Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet

I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.

• Allen Tate / Poet

We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.

• Conrad Hall / Film Cinematographer

Manipulating shadows and tonality is like writing music or a poem.

• Percy Bysshe Shelley / Poet

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

• Philip Levine / Poet

Back then, I couldn't have left a poem a year and gone back to it.

• Douglas Dunn

A poet's cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem.

• Mary Oliver / Poet

I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.

• Peter Davison

The reason one writes poems is so that your poem will be remembered.

• Dwane Casey / Basketball Coach

I have a favorite poem. From Rudyard Kipling. It's called 'L'Envoi.'

• Eileen Myles / Poet

The most exciting thing is to read a poem out loud for the first time.

• Steven Wright / Comedian

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

• John Barton

No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?

• Alejandra Pizarnik / Poet

I redo the body of my poem like someone who tries to cure her own wound.

• Joseph Brodsky / Poet

After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.

• Anne Waldman / Poet

I want the poem to be an experience - for both the listener and for myself.

• Pablo Neruda / Senator Of Chile

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

• Tracy K. Smith / Poet

For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.

• James Broughton / Poet

For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.