112 quotes found
“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved the Inquisition might have let him alone.”
“In poetry you must love the words the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.”
“One of Wordsworth's Lake District neighbours remarked upon hearing of the poet's death "I suppose his son will carry on the business."”
“Poetry is not a profession it's a destiny.”
“Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.”
“Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.”
“For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.”
“Poets and painters are outside the class system or rather they constitute a special class of their own like the circus people and the gypsies.”
“The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.”
“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.”
“When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.”
“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.”
“When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre...”
“I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.”
“When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.”
“There's no money in poetry but then there's no poetry in money either.”
“Science is for those who learn poetry for those who know.”
“The essentials of poetry are rhythm dance and the human voice.”
“Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.”
