“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.”
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.
“I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.”
“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.”
“One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.”
“The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think.”
“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”
“But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.”
“Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.”
“Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.”
“We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.”
“Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.”
“Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.”
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
“Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.”
“It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.”
“Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.”
“I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.”