The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it. Use this quote
Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary. Use this quote
Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it. Use this quote
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. Use this quote
Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture. Use this quote
I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan. Use this quote
A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art. Use this quote
I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian. Use this quote
I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic. Use this quote
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. Use this quote
Poetry, especially traditional Iranian poetry, is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously. Use this quote
Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew. Use this quote
I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican. Use this quote
The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch. Use this quote
No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers. Use this quote
Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production. Use this quote
In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag-waver, bunting hanger-up, drum-beater, you name it, for poetry. Use this quote
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. Use this quote
Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter. Use this quote
So I suppose poetry, language, the shaping of it, was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations. Use this quote
