Quotes from C. Day Lewis

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.

A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.

I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.... We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.

There's a kind of release And a kind of torment in every goodbye for every man.

Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.