Poet Quotes

I express myself in sculpture since I am not a poet.

The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.

I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.

Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.

No bad man can be a good poet.

A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism.

According to them, the poet is confined to the provinces with his mouth broken on his own syllabic trapeze.

The antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.

Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.

I was a piano player before I was a poet.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

None merits the name of Creator but God and the poet.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

The poet is a madman lost in adventure.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

Poetry is a succession of questions which the poet constantly poses.

These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: Can't live with them, or without them.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

The most original sin is not the thinker's but the poet's.

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.

Being identified as a poet in France or Denmark or India one is greeted with gracious respect.

A paranoiac like a poet, is born, not made.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

If there ever was a poet for the working class Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard would be my nomination.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.

You will find the poet who wrings the heart of the world, or the foremost captain of his time, driving a bargain or paring a potato, just as you would do.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!

For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

A poet's cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem.

They think I'm going to be a schoolteacher but I'm going to be a poet.

Kevin Smith is so great in 'Kingdom Come,' isn't he? He's kind of this very earthy poet. He just has this immediate gregariousness, like, you kind of just want to be his pal.

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects.

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.

I love the 19th-century idea of the flaneur, the poet wandering through the streets.

I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.

It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

Jim wanted to be known as a poet, first and foremost.

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.

I earn more than I thought I would when I became a poet.

I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott.

Theodore Roethke was a poet I was raised with so he has a lot of sentimental value for me.

All a poet can do today is warn.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I want to be remembered as a poet, a peacemaker, and a philosopher who played.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.

There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.

I'm much more of a musician than a poet. I just feel much more confident about my musical abilities.

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.