Poet Quotes - Page 27

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.

Some poets marry a language; some have affairs with it; some treat it as a parent, some as a child, some as an equal, or as a friend.

Poetry and code - and mathematics - make us read differently from other forms of writing. Written poetry makes the silent reader read three kinds of pattern at once; code moves the reader from a static to an active, interactive and looped domain; while algebraic topology allows us to read qualitative forms and their transformations.

Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

The function of poetry is to point out that the sign is not identical to the referent.

We're not laughing at you - we're laughing near you

I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence. Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

Freedom is slavery some poets tell us. Enslave yourself to the right leader's truth, Christ's or Karl Marx', and it will set you free.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

Golf is to me what his Sabine farm was to the poet Horace - a solace and an inspiration.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

Every man is a poet when he is in love.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

...the poet, while creating anew, is likely to be in a sense restoring something old.

The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.

Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it.

There are two ways of disliking poetry, one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.

I have never considered myself a poet. I have no interest in poetic artistry.