“I was a 16-year-old girl at one point, so of course I wrote poetry.”
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.
“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”
“I was a 16-year-old girl at one point, so of course I wrote poetry.”
“Poetry: the best words in the best order.”
“God is the perfect poet.”
“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
“For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.”
“Wine is bottled poetry.”
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
“Poetry is really a way of sharing feelings and ideas.”
“As for how criticism of Keats' poetry relates to criticism of my own work, I'll leave that for others to decide.”
“Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.”
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”
“Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.”
“I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”
“Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.”
“Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.”