Poet Quotes

As I look over my work, I mean every time I look over my early work, I see, yes, I could do that then and then I could do that and that... That may be the hardest thing for a writer, at least for a poet, to tell what the identity of his work is.

People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Jim wanted to be known as a poet, first and foremost.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

The eyes of a poet discover in each person a unique and irreplaceable humanity. While arrogant intellect seeks to control and manipulate the world, the poetic spirit bows with reverence before its mysteries.

None merits the name of Creator but God and the poet.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business.

My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something, and he was very creative.

A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.

I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it.

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.

I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas. If you are a poet, your works will contain them without your knowledge'they will be both moral and national if you follow your inspiration freely.

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

And muse on Nature with a poet's eye.

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

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important.

But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.