Poetry Quotes

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. 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.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

The one man who should never attempt an explanation on poetry is its author. If the poem can be improved by its author�s explanations, it never should have been published.

Too many poets delude themselves by thinking that the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.