Quotes on Poet

Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.

The poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire. He is responsible for humanity, for animals even; he will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to; if what he brings back from beyond has form, he gives it form; if it has none, he gives it none. A language must be found…of the soul, for the soul and will include everything: perfumes, sounds colors, thought grappling with thought

It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

What the poet is searching for_x000D_ is not the fundamental I_x000D_ but the deep you.

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull.

Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.

In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.

If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.

For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency---half tiger,half poet.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

Some find Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran’s poetry preachy and moralizing, but I find it plenty enlightening—it’s hard to object to the melodic, cosmic of mysticism of a line like ‘That which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.’