Poets don’t count in this country… that’s why they are so free, of course. Artistic freedom is really an insult here. Take Russia or an East European country like Poland – they are scared shitless of poets. That’s why they ban a lot of anti-government stuff – because they respect a poet’s power. Can you […]
Poetry Quotes
I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
By the way, I heard an answer today to the platitude: ‘There’s no money in poetry.’ It was: ‘There’s no poetry in money, either.’
I am sorry to hear you are going to publish a poem. Can’t you suppress it? (Remark to Lord Porchester)
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.
I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and – if he is lucky enough – know the love of an honest woman.
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.
An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who molds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody’s use, and glorify them by his handling.
