Poets Quotes

Pound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

He was certainly in a confused state. I used to go and visit him in Callan Park. They were really - to me they were the best poets those two writing in those days but it wasn't very encouraging because, well, they weren't getting far were they?

The American public does not know poets exist.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Science is not addressed to poets.

The trouble with the performance poets is that they don't seem to have read anything. So there is not a real sense of the poetic tradition in their work.

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.

It is possible that Mount Olympus may have supplied the poets with the hint for saying that Jupiter obtained the kingdom of heaven, because Olympus is the common name both of the mountain and of heaven.

It's difficult to get films made, especially films about poets.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

I'm inspired by the poets, so I'm always going to give in that direction, rather than in any other. It's the making of me... and also the downfall of me.

Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.

I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

Poets are born, not paid.

Most poets in their youth begin in adolescent sadness. I find it more rewarding to end in gladness.