Love is love. It is God-given, and a sacrament. It is not for any man to judge.
As poet laureate, I was asked to be a spokesman for literature.
I never thought of myself as a New York poet or as an American poet.
Auden is a poet - no, the poet - of unembarrassed intellect. Ideas are his emotions, emotions are his ideas.
There are two types of poets: People who write poetically about their lives, and poets that live poetically and write about it.
Meeks: I'll try anything once. Dalton: Except sex.
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Insofar as craft and poetics in a poem have a politics, I wanted to avoid that brittle enjambed-prose-sentence-lyric verse, where you have standard sentences snapped off and scattered decoratively across the page (which I might go out on a limb and s...
A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody...
Songs of myself I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into new tongue. I am the poet of the w...
This constant basso on the horizon is it the waterfall or the cannon ("Poem")
Praise from your heart caresses my soul.
Do not deprive me of my age. I have earned it.
Will our lives be dull or packed with adventure?
I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.
As fire kindled by fire, so is the poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.
John Keating: We're not laughing at you - we're laughing near you.
Neil: If I don't ask him, at least I won't be disobeying him.
For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.
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.
