Once in a while, I have to pinch myself to remind myself I am Nobel laureate, but that is not part of my work plan every day.
To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity.
I don't know if younger poets read a lot of, you know, the poets - the established poets. There was a lot of pretty boring stuff to sort of put up with and to add to, to make something vital from.
Disappointment is the end of an illusion.
The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.
As regards literary culture, it fascinates me that it has been so resilient to the Union. For example, when T.S. Eliot wanted to become poet in these lands, it wasn't as an English poet, it was an Anglian poet he wanted to be.
So, I've never been politically correct, even before that term was available to us, and I have really identified with other people who don't want to be read as just a black poet, or just a woman poet, or just someone who represents a cause, an anti-V...
Having experimented in both poetry and prose, I can say that the two are such loaded words. But neither are quite as weighted as the word “poet”. I think some people can write poetry their whole lives, and never truly BE a “poet”. Whereas I s...
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
Looking through the list of earlier Nobel laureates, I note a large number with whom I became acquainted and with whom I interacted during those years as they passed through Cambridge.
A poet is simply an artist whose medium is human emotions. A poet chisels away at our own sensibilities, shaping our vision while molding our hearts. A poet wraps words around our own feelings and presents them as fresh gifts to humanity.
All poets are idlers, even if all idlers are not poets.
A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.
Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.
Dalton: I'm exercising the right not to walk.
Nolan: Free thinkers at 17?
Neil: I was good. I was really good.
Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.
The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
We all have something of a doctor, a poet and a fool.
everybody loves a poet a poet loves everybody
