Walter Scott Quotes

One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

When I think of Emily Dickinson, there's not one particular poem of hers that jumps out, but I do have a very vivid image of an ill woman with giant eyes who wants to write about the sun exploding.

No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.

I have seen so many poets who were famous, who won all sorts of prizes, disappear with their death. I write as good as I can and don't try to turn that into some hope for a future that I could never know.

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee! . . . . . . Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart: So didst thou travel on life's common way In cheerful godliness.

We are all youthful barbarians, and only our new toys bring us excitement. That has been the sole purpose of our flights. This one flies higher, that one faster. But now we will make ourselves at home. We will forget the machine, the tool. It is no longer complex; it does what it is supposed to do, unnoticed. And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join'd the former two.

Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions.

Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.

Best thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death.

The record of poetry in the 20th century isn't all that great anyway. Most of the poets who weren't fascists were Stalinists.

Poets by Death are conquer'd but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.

Part of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.

George Oppen wasn't a larger than life personality, but I'm not either. And he lived a long time, so he was happy. Going down in flames is fine, too.

Love. Children are loving, they dont gossip, they dont complain, theyre just open-hearted. Theyre ready for you. They dont judge. They dont see things by way of color. Theyre very child-like. Thats the problem with adults: they lose that child-like quality. And thats the level of inspiration thats so needed and is so important for creating and writing songs and for a sculptor, a poet or a novelist. Its that same kind of innocence, that same level of consciousness, that you create from. And kids have it. I feel it right away from animals and children and nature. Of course.

The poets did not win; the philosophers surrendered.

Only those of our poets who kept solidly to the Shakespearean tradition achieved any measure of success. But Keats was the last great exponent of that tradition, and we all know how thin, how lacking in charm, the copies of Keats have become.

The New York School poets are my godfathers creatively.

Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.

He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.

Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

And mighty poets in their misery dead.