Poet Quotes

Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, 'A civilization is judged only in its decline.' That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.

Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

The poet does not fear death, not because he believes in the fantasy of heroes, but because death constantly visits his thoughts and is thus an image of a serene dialogue.

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.

In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.

Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

The poet's perfect expression is the token of a perfect experience; what he says in the best possible way he has felt in the best possible way, that is, completely.

Poetry is a succession of questions which the poet constantly poses.

Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.

The poet is a madman lost in adventure.

All a poet can do today is warn.

A rich poet from Harvard has no sense in his mind, except the aesthetic.

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.

I have never considered myself a poet. I have no interest in poetic artistry.

From the throes of inspiration and the eddies of thought the poet may at last be able to arrive at, and convey the right admixture of words and meaning.