Poet Quotes

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

Well, it's a badge of honour for any self-respecting poet to be criticized by Auberon Waugh. But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Theodore Roethke was a poet I was raised with so he has a lot of sentimental value for me.

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.

And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

If there ever was a poet for the working class Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard would be my nomination.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.

Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore, they felt, he couldn't be serious.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

A poet or prose narrator usually looks back on what he has achieved against a backdrop of the years that have passed, generally finding that some of these achievements are acceptable, while others are less so.

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.

The violinist must possess the poet's gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry.

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.

The talent of a true writer and poet is in the ear.

The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet.