This poem will never reach its destination. [On Rousseau’s Ode To Posterity]

As to ”Don Juan,” confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life,...

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.”

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is...

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring...

As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one’s language against corruption. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear and this leads to violence.

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a ”suspension of belief.” A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be...

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet.

I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought...

Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: –in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.

Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry –That is a life.

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

We must believe that ”emotion recollected in tranquillity” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from...