A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.
Poetry Quotes
“Look into thy heart and write!” is good advice, but not if interpreted to mean, “Look nowhere else!” The poet should know his world and, so far as his art is concerned, any kind of battering from his world is better than his own self-indulgent brooding.
I care not one single curse for all the criticism that ever was canted or decanted, or recanted. Neither does the world. The world takes a poet as it finds him, and seats him above or below the salt. The world is as obstinate as a million mules, and will not turn its head on […]
Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. Let not what should be sauce, rather than food for you, engross all your application. Beware of a boundless and sickly appetite for the reading of poems which the nation now swarms withal; and let not the Circaen […]
The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have else they will never have better.
In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it. Other poets take longer.
When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
Here is Robert Frost, last of the antiques, celebrating the inauguration of old-fashioned high-binder John F. Kennedy: Some poor fool has been saying in his heart Glory is out of date in life and art. Our venture in revolution and outlawry Has justified itself in freedom’s story Right down to now in glory upon glory. […]
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
