Others

For me, a poet is someone who is “in contact.” Someone through whom a current is passing.

For me, a poet is someone who is “in contact.” Someone through whom a current is passing.

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

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

A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.

A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

Poetry is the purest of the language arts. It’s the tightest cage, and if you can get to sing in that cage it’s really really wonderful.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

Touched by poetry, language is more fully language and at the same time is no longer language: it is a poem.

Poetry is life distilled.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It’s concentrated, you carry it around with you, and it nourishes you when you need it.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.

The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.

The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.

A poem is less a thing than any other work of art.