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
The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.
-Jane Kenyon
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
-W. H. Auden
"The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose: Volume II."
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
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
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
-Jean Cocteau
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
-Edmond De Goncourt
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-T. S. Eliot
"Dante"
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
-Walt Whitman
