I was very lucky to have a mother who encouraged me to become a poet.
Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.
My dad wanted to name me after Rainier Maria Rilke, the poet.
I had grown up as an Irish poet in a country where the distance between vision and imagination was not quite as wide as in some other countries.
Auden is a poet – no, the poet – of unembarrassed intellect. Ideas are his emotions, emotions are his ideas.
When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet’s task to turn it into an audience.
Poets these days, like artists and composers, have won for themselves almost unlimited freedom. You can pass yourself off as a painter without being able to draw, as a composer without being conscious of key relationships, and as a poet without making yourself familiar with traditional verse forms.
It’s ironic that while I was a worker in Detroit, which I left when I was twenty six, my sense was that the thing that’s going to stop me from being a poet is the fact that I’m doing this crummy work.
Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.
My father is a poet. He’s a literary giant of this country – writes in Hindi – and also quite unique because he has a Ph.D. in English Literature. He taught at Harvard University, which is one of the most prominent universities in the country.
Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn’t know the way it’s going to come out, and at times, he is very surprised by the way it turns out, since often it turns out better than he expected; often his thought carries further than he reckoned.
I was much further along as a poet than as a songwriter, but the songs were getting more attention. They were doing what art is supposed to do, mixing it up with people.
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
Shakespeare is, after all, Britain’s greatest poet and dramatist.
The interesting thing is that you don’t often meet a poet who doesn’t have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of their poems because they’re afraid of being seen as light versifiers.
What I want, when I write a poem, is no more than this: that it be preserved in some published form so that, in principle, someone, somewhere, will be able to find it and read it. That is all I need, as a poet, and that is the beauty, the luxury of my position. My lyric is mine and remains mine. Nobody can ruin it.
I made myself into a poet because it was the first thing I really loved. It was an act of will.
Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn’t think I could understand poetry; I didn’t think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was introduced to the right poem.
There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
‘Therefore’ is a word the poet must not know.
Rainer Maria Rilke was admittedly not a Dockers tagger, but a sort of European equivalent: a German poet – in many respects, a charlatan masquerading as a genius who turned out to be a genius.
Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.
Oh, happy triumph of the poet! – to hear his verses wedded to sweet sounds, and warbled by the woman he loves!
The way to praise a poet is to write a poem.
Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series ‘M*A*S*H,’ and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet!
Although I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet.
Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let them go because they’re just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.
If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.
With ‘Peradam’, the nature of the project was such that it was deeply immersed in spiritual concepts in India and is based on the works of French poet Rene Daumal.
A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.
One time on a dive, I wound up drifting up in darkness surrounded by billions of photoluminescent creatures. It was a religious experience, one only a poet could do justice to.
The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.
The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler.
A born poet knows in his cradle that a poetic life is the only life worth living.
God is the perfect poet.
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
I try to stay a civilian, to live as a human, not as a poet.
A poet could write volumes about diners, because they’re so beautiful. They’re brightly lit, with chrome and booths and Naugahyde and great waitresses. Now, it might not be so great in the health department, but I think diner food is really worth experiencing periodically.
If you want to be a poet, you can just write it on a napkin, and it’s the length of the napkin, I guess. But usually you decide you’ll rhyme it, or you’ll have a formula. In radio, that’s something called, ‘Close your eyes and listen.’
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.
Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
The generous Critic fann’d the Poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.
I’m the happiest combination you can think of. I’m a Russian poet, an English essayist, and a citizen of the United States.
The musician – if he be a good one – finds his own perception prompted by the poet’s perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.
I really wanted to be a poet – until I realized that I really didn’t have what it took to be a poet.
And in a way, that’s been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet – sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.
I’ve always considered myself a poet in everything that I do, whether it’s photography or movie-making.
When I finished high school, I didn’t have much direction – I was a Deadhead kid who ended up bumming around London seeing a lot of theater. That’s where I saw the performance that made me want to act: Vanessa Redgrave doing ‘A Touch of the Poet.’
Biggie was to me the guy who was the best at painting the picture and making you visualize something, Pac was the best poet, and I feel like Jay Z is all of the above. Then Rick Ross is just, every line he spits is just perfect, and he’s one of my favorite MCs of all time.
I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet’s.
Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don’t mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber’s film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.
The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds – how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday-lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
I’m very fortunate in that my parents are artists. My mom is a brilliant poet… She still is a great visual artist. My dad is a jazz drummer… I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve had parents who supported and encouraged me and haven’t really questioned what I’m doing or asked me to question it.
I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.
I’m no parasite. I’m a poet who will bring honor and glory to his country.
I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.
No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.
