If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
-Derek Walcott
Quotations
Poet
When a poet speaks to his own people, the voices of all other poets of other languages who have influenced him are speaking also.
-T. S. Eliot
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
-Plato
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-Alfred De Musset
"Le Poète déchu"
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
-Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"The Sole Survivor"
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-T. S. Eliot
"Dante"
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
-Edmund Burke
A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
-Edmond De Goncourt
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
-Criss Jami
