Poets treat their experiences shamelessly; they exploit them.
Poetry Quotes
Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. Let not what should be sauce, rather than food for you, engross all your application. Beware of a boundless and sickly appetite for the reading of poems which the nation now swarms withal; and let not the Circaen […]
“Look into thy heart and write!” is good advice, but not if interpreted to mean, “Look nowhere else!” The poet should know his world and, so far as his art is concerned, any kind of battering from his world is better than his own self-indulgent brooding.
I care not one single curse for all the criticism that ever was canted or decanted, or recanted. Neither does the world. The world takes a poet as it finds him, and seats him above or below the salt. The world is as obstinate as a million mules, and will not turn its head on […]
When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have else they will never have better.
In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it. Other poets take longer.
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
Poets as we know have always made a great use of alliteration. They are persuaded that the repetition of a sound give an effect of beauty. I do not think it does in prose. It seems to me that in prose alliteration should be used only for a special reason; when used by accident it […]
We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
