Quotes on Poetry By Poets

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.