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
Quotations
Poet
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
-Edmund Burke
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"
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
-Criss Jami
Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.
-Allen Ginsberg
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."
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
A few moments in a poet’s company teach us more about the essence of art than many a lecture and books.
-Etinne Gilsun
