Poems Quotes

I like poems that are complex.

The best public poems aren't necessarily those that go at the subject like a bull at a gate.

If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.

My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

By reason of weird translation, many such sets of instructions read like poems anyhow.

On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!

I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.

The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged.

I would like to be proud of having written some poems that will be remembered, but I will never know whether I will have any reason to be proud of that.

I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made.

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

I also write poems, so that is something that I really enjoy.

I'm terrified of switching the computer on because there are so many poems.

I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.

All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

Well it is certainly the case that the poems - which were in fact published during Shakespeare's lifetime - are weird if they began or originated in this form, as I think they did, because the poems get out of control.

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last.

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.

I want to write poems which are very emotional, but I would have some hesitation in saying I want to write poems which are sentimental.

Poems in a way are spells against death. They are milestones, to see where you were then from where you are now. To perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.

When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to.