Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
-Edmund Burke
Quotations
Poet
If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
-Derek Walcott
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
-W. H. Auden
Always be a poet, even in prose.
-Charles Baudelaire
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.
-Allen Ginsberg
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-H. L. Mencken
