Poets Quotes

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do.

And thus it was that I started to wonder why Robert Burns is so important to us. We have other poets, and other writers, and other heroes, yet we do not afford them the veneration that we afford to Robert Burns.

Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world, and at myself, from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.

My father, George, has also affected the choices in my life regarding films. I like films that take chances or say something different or experiment. Growing up with him, I was surrounded by different artists - not just actors or film-makers but cartoonists, poets, writers.

All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.

There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.

Whilst in Prussia poets only speak of the love of country as one of the dearest of all human affections, here there is no man who does not feel, and describe with rapture, how much he loves his country.

Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets.

Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets.

I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it.

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.

Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like.

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.

I think one of the things that language poets are very involved with is getting away from conventional ideas of beauty, because those ideas contain a certain attitude toward women, certain attitudes toward sex, certain attitudes toward race, etc.

Some of my favorite poets had a tremendous sense of whimsy, so it's a writing style I guess I admire.

Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.

Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.