Poets Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

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.