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
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
-Edmund Burke
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-T. S. Eliot
"Dante"
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
All good poems are victories over something.
-Stephen Dunn
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
It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.
-Dejan Stojanović
Always be a poet, even in prose.
-Charles Baudelaire
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
-Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"The Sole Survivor"
