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
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
-Walt Whitman
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
-Criss Jami
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
-Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"The Sole Survivor"
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
-Pablo Neruda
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
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
-René Char
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
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
