It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.
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.
Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.
And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.
The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.
The job of the poet is to render the world - to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.
I've got a book of poetry by the bed, one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.
For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry.
Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.'
Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.
Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.
Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!
The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.
Becoming interested in poetics got me interested in theater. Theater is supposed to be poetry, you know, before it's anything else. It just doesn't fly if it isn't musical.
The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.
The experimental poetry thing is not my thing. It's a programme of the avant-garde: basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write.
Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.
