“Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.”
Poetry says in twenty words what prose takes two hundred to approximate. These quotes explore the craft, the beauty, and the necessity of verse — from poets who live for it and readers who are grateful they do.
“France is not poetic she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.”
“Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.”
“Poetry is composing for the breath.”
“True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know.”
“American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.”
“I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.”
“Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.”
“I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.”
“Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.”
“Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.”
“Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.”
“The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.”
“Well you can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft.”
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”
“Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.”
“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”