He said, "You have pigs in this poem; pigs are not poetic." I got up and walked out of that class and never went back.

- Carolyn Kizer

In some ways painters have been more important in my life than writers. Painters teach you how to see—a faculty that usually isn’t highly developed i…

- Carolyn Kizer

I happen to believe that there are a lot of good poets around at present, but a poet like Alex Kuo, who possesses a highly developed moral sense and …

- Carolyn Kizer

What is so marvelous about living today is that it is possible to extend, like a flower, spreading petals in all directions.

- Carolyn Kizer

We live in wonder, blaze in a cycle of passion and apprehension.

- Carolyn Kizer

She tended to be impatient with that sort of intellectual who, for all his brilliance, has never been able to arrive at the simple conclusion that to…

- Carolyn Kizer

You cannot meet someone for a moment, or even cast eyes on someone in the street, without changing. That is my subject.

- Carolyn Kizer

Poems, to me, do not come from ideas, they come from a series of images that you tuck away in the back of your brain. Little photographic snapshots. …

- Carolyn Kizer

You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.

- Carolyn Kizer