The poet is the priest of the invisible.
A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.
Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.
No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose - words in their best order; poetry - the best words in their best order.
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.
The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.
Science is for those who learn; poetry for those who know.
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
The poet's mind is ... a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.
Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
Poetry is a mug's game.
A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or alovesickness. 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 words.
An art in which the artist by means of rhythm and great sincerity can convey to others the sentiment which he feels about life.
Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.
