Poet Quotes

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I think some period drama can be quite alienating, but 'Downton' isn't. This is going to sound quite, um, pretentious, but someone said that it's like a soap written by a poet.

From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

The poet's expression of joy conceals his despair at not having found the reality of joy.

God is the perfect poet.

As I look over my work, I mean every time I look over my early work, I see, yes, I could do that then and then I could do that and that... That may be the hardest thing for a writer, at least for a poet, to tell what the identity of his work is.

People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Jim wanted to be known as a poet, first and foremost.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.

My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something, and he was very creative.

A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.

I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it.

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.

I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas. If you are a poet, your works will contain them without your knowledge'they will be both moral and national if you follow your inspiration freely.

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.