At some point in a quiet evening, a poem can feel less like an object and more like a lantern. As Robert Penn Warren wrote, “The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see.”

“Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.” ~ Marianne Moore

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” ~ T.S. Eliot

“Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.” ~ James Fenton

“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either.” ~ Robert Graves

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” ~ W. H. Auden

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“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.” ~ T.S. Eliot

“Everyone has one good poem in his hidden head.” ~ Don Welch

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” ~ Leonard Cohen

“The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.” ~ Wallace Stevens

“An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.” ~ Raymond Chandler

“Being a poet is not a choice, it's a way of life. It comes to me like the water, from some invisible well or source.” ~ Joanna Harris

“But the lover's power is the poet's power. He can make love from all the common strings with which this world is strung.” ~ Amelia Barr

“Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you.” ~ Virgil

“Each plain name is title for a poem, flowing with the grand melody of life.” ~ Jiang He

“Every new poem is like finding a new bride. Words are so erotic, they never tire of their coupling. How do they renew themselves? In their inexhaustible desire for combinations and recombinations.” ~ Stanley Kunitz

“Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head. Guard your good mood. Listen to music every day, joke, and love and read more for fun, especially poetry.” ~ Meryl Streep, U of New Hampshire, 2003