"The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see." ~ Robert Penn Warren
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
The poem must resist the intelligencet 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
