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
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own.
-Dejan Stojanović
I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.
-Edith Södergran
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
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
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
-Plato
All good poems are victories over something.
-Stephen Dunn
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
-Jean Cocteau
"Le Rappel á l'ordre"
