Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully.
Poetry Quotes
Few understand the works of Cummings, And few James Joyce’s mental slummings, And few young Auden’s coded chatter; But then it is the few that matter.
The good poet sticks to his real loves, to see within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
The poet is the priest of the invisible.
(Some poets), like Eliot have become so aware of the huge mechanism of the past that their poems read like scholarly conglomerations of a century’s wisdom, and are difficult to follow unless we have an intimate knowledge of Dante, the Golden Bough, and the weather-reports in Sanskrit.
I am always asked how it is that my opinions have changed so little since my youth. It is because I got to them by poetry. As I always say, the aesthetic is the most convincing and permanent.
It is a part of the poet’s work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
