No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
Quotations
Poet
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
-George Sand
Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.
-Dorothy L. Sayers
"Busman's Honeymoon"
A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.
-Jay Z
"Decoded"
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-Alfred De Musset
"Le Poète déchu"
Poets create gods, philosophers destroy them.
-Marty Rubin
Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.
-Antoine De Saint Exupéry
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
-René Char
