Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
The earnings of a poet could be reckoned by a metaphysician rather than a bookkeeper.
Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.
Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.
Iambics march from short to long;-- With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.
The function of poetry is to point out that the sign is not identical to the referent.
20th century poetry is a piñata. Images break from the earth when the poet strikes it.
For a poet, making poems is a way of viewing the world, being in the world, breathing.
I always say that one's poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one's friends.
But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.
Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.
I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
This is my heartbeat like yours, it is a hatchet It can build a house or tear one down.
I want a poem which is made of compression, passion, precision, symmetry, & disruption.
Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.
I was only sitting here in my white study with the awful black words pushing me around.
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
the truth of a poem is its form and its content, its music and its meaning are the same.
A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.
I like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection.
It is only when we are aware of the earth and of the earth as poetry that we truly live.
These days, if you happen to be a poet you have to sing your words to get your ideas out.
Life's full of loss, who knows the cost, living in the memory of the love that never was.
Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.
Poetry gets to be the poetry of life by successfully becoming first the poetry of poetry.
The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.
the attempt to control poetry, to subordinate it to extra-poetic ends, constitutes misuse.
How do you define a poet? It's very simple. Anyone declaring that he is a poet, is a poet.
The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty the less? or a sense the more?
The five excellences include: calligraphy, painting, poetry, medicine, and t'ai chi chuan.
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.
In poetry, even discourse about doubts must be cast in a discourse that cannot be doubted.
Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time.
Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.
I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.
My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.
What raises great poetry above all else--it is the entire person and also the entire world.
I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not.