Poet Quotes

The great poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the mind.

The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry.

There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.

As a poet, one lives a bit on air. I always like someone who can teach me something practical.

With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her ah, when Did I not need her, solitary else?

Was ever poet so trusted before?

To a poet nothing can be useless.

The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.

The process of writing a poem represents work done on the self of the poet, in order to make form.

If he had had no education, maybe Basho could have been a much greater poet.

Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful.

The whole race is a poet that writes down / The eccentric propositions of its fate.

Bad poets imitate, good poets steal.

If you know much about your work - why you work, how you work, your aims - you are probably not a poet.

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with clothes, a poet of clothes.

The New York School poets are my godfathers creatively.

I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. I believe that I will return. Poets always return in flesh or on paper.

Chloe turned to Vetch. The poet said gently, "You see, you do have power. Words give you power, to create or destroy." His eyes flickered to Clare. "Even to forgive.

A poet, to whom no one cruel or imposing listens, Disdained by senates, whispers to your dust.

Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant, and, as some say, of the first that was ever written.

Tinted Distances is the achievement of a wise and discerning poet.

The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, From earth to heaven.

And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook Because my hand thinks I'm an artist But my heart knows I'm a poet It's just words they mean so little to me.

Try to keep them, poet, those erotic visions of yours, however few of them there are that can be stilled. Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.

For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Andrea Gibson is a truly American poet, or rather, she represents the America I want to live in. Her work lights a candle to lead us where we need to go.

I pulled a book by Robinson Jeffers off the shelf one day. It was powerfully moving. Tears ran down my face. That's when I became a poet.

As poets, our lamentations are glorious, filled with the virtues angles would learn to envy.

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have else they will never have better.

Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

Take [Stéphane] Mallarme. I hold him to be the greatest of French poets, and I have taken some time to understand him !

Being a poet is like having an invisible partner. It isn't easy. But you can't live without it either. Talent is only 10 per cent. The rest is obsession.

Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet.

We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.

God, eldest of Poets.

"Painters and poets," you say, "have always had an equal license in bold invention." We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others.

She was not a poet. She was a poem.

Ausonius must be read to be believed! As poet, no subject is too trivial for him; as courtier, no flattery too excessive.

A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.

I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.

Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.

A poet laureate of adolescent sexuality and middle-age longing.

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

A life-whether seamstress or poet, farmer or king-is measured not by length, but by the worth of its deeds, and the power of its dreams.