Poet Quotes

A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

I think there's a poet who wrote once a tragedy by Shakespeare, a symphony by Beethoven and a thunderstorm are based on the same elements. I think that's a beautiful line.

To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.

Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, 'A civilization is judged only in its decline.' That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.

Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

The poet does not fear death, not because he believes in the fantasy of heroes, but because death constantly visits his thoughts and is thus an image of a serene dialogue.

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.

Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

The poet's perfect expression is the token of a perfect experience; what he says in the best possible way he has felt in the best possible way, that is, completely.

Poetry is a succession of questions which the poet constantly poses.

Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.