Poet Quotes

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.

Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.

The poet laureate of England talked about murdering Jews on the West Bank.

We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.

The poet's spoken discourse often depends on a mystique, on the spiritual freedom that finds itself enslaved on earth.

A paranoiac like a poet, is born, not made.

The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time.

As the poet has expected, the alarms now are sounded, for - and it must be said again - the birth of a poet is always a threat to the existing cultural order, because he attempts to break through the circle of literary castes to reach the center.

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.

The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a dream.

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.