Poetry quotes

No poem is easily grasped so why should any reader expect fast results?

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

God is the perfect poet.

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.