Edward Young Quotes

I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word 'accessible.'

Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry.

Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.

Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and dance, what's the use of putting them down on paper.

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of [a work], outside of the narrowest and most obvious limits. At the one extreme some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation. Their very novelty would make them repulsive until the public had learned the new language in which their author spoke.

Miracles only happen if you believe in miracles.

There is in every miracle a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them who require, or who need miracles.

I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.

Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.

either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.

To be realistic, you have to believe in miracles.

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.

I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry - all of the past you read is usually quite great - but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side.

To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling is what no man without genius could be if he would.

I believe in the possibility of miracles but, more to the point, I believe in our need for them.

Dan Gerber is one of our finest living poets.

I'm filled with admiration, delight, and gratitude at discovering James Lasdun's poems in A Jump Start. He has wit, speed, intelligence, a keen eye, precision, and imagination of a high order.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.

A miracle is something that seems impossible but happens anyway.

God does uncommon things through common people in common places.

A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet . . . yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.