I have met with most poetry on trunks; so that I am pat to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship.
Poetry Quotes
You don’t have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
In the Book of Poetry there are three hundred poems, but the meaning of all of them may be put in a single sentence: Have no debasing thoughts.
Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories, And all least furlable things got “furled”; Not with any design to conceal their glories, But simply and solely to rhyme with “world.” O if “billows” and “pillows” and “hours” and “flowers,” And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, Could be furled together, this genial weather, And […]
I know that poetry is indispensible, but to what I could not say.
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.
The words of Milton are true in all things, and were never truer than in this: ‘He who would write heroic poems must make his whole life a heroic poem.’
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Poetry is highly explosive, but no good poet since Eliot can but perceive the extreme difficulty of writing good poetry… We have one poet of genius in Auden, who is able to write prolifically, carelessly, and exquisitely, nor does he seem to have to pay any price for his inspiration. It is as if he […]
Giving a name, indeed, is a poetic art; all poetry, if we go to that with it, is but a giving of names.
