Quotes About Poetry

I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.

For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.

Poe's saying that a long poem is a sequence of short ones is perfectly just.

For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

When I see great boxers, it's like reading a wonderful poem.

I was actually a poetry major in college before I punted and decided to become a theater major. I wrote the poem that we put on the sauerkraut boxes in the style of Elling.

Often people, when they're confronted with a poem, it's like someone who keep saying 'what is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this?' And that dulls us to the other pleasures poetry offers.

I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.

A really good poem is full of music.

You can say a lot more with a poem than you can with a song, but with a song you can really be more powerful with it. You can express it a lot more powerfully.

I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.

I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue. If it does, I can feel a sense of momentum - the poem finds a reason for continuing.

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.

There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness.

At each moment, a poem might grow into a totally different shape. It is not so much like working in a garden. It is more as if you remade the garden every day.

I wrote a staggeringly bad poem when I was 19 after a girlfriend dumped me. I seem to remember comparing her to a tarantula. It was all very E. J. Thribb of me.

I do read a poem almost every morning. Unless I'm really, really late, I have to get my poem in.

I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue.

A poem is bound by language, but a poetics is not.

Poetry, as odd as it is, and as hard to figure out as it is, many times, it's almost something that we're used to. It's kind of like a dream language that we had centuries ago, so that when we speak poetically or write a poem about what's going on, a real difficult issue that's facing our communities, people listen.

The most exciting thing is to read a poem out loud for the first time.

A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.

Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.