A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
Poetry Quotes
Any poet born in this century or in the last ten years of the preceding century who can honestly say that he has not been influenced by or learned greatly from the work of Ezra Pound deserves to be pitied rather than rebuked – the best of Pound’s writing – and it is in the […]
Poetry is simply made of metaphor. So also is philosophy – and science, too, for that matter, if it will take the soft impeachment from a friend.
There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money, either.
Poets don’t count in this country… that’s why they are so free, of course. Artistic freedom is really an insult here. Take Russia or an East European country like Poland – they are scared shitless of poets. That’s why they ban a lot of anti-government stuff – because they respect a poet’s power. Can you […]
I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
By the way, I heard an answer today to the platitude: ‘There’s no money in poetry.’ It was: ‘There’s no poetry in money, either.’
I am sorry to hear you are going to publish a poem. Can’t you suppress it? (Remark to Lord Porchester)
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.
I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and – if he is lucky enough – know the love of an honest woman.
