Quotes About Inspiration

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.

Let yourself become living poetry.

When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

The wheat field has ...poetry; it is like a memory of something one has once seen. We can only make our pictures speak.

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.

Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.

We are surrounded by poetry on all sides.

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it.

Poetry begins as the divine speech of the bicameral mind. Then, as the bicameral mind breaks down, there remain prophets.

Each of us has his own alphabet with which to create poetry.

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.

Poetry must be made by all and not by one.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

Why is it that all men who are outstanding in philosophy, poetry or the arts are melancholic?

As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.

If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?