Rodney Crowell Quotes

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

No bad man can be a good poet.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

The only nice poets I've ever met were bad poets, and a bad poet is not a poet at all - ergo, I've never met a nice poet.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

I was one of those dark, quiet kids that wrote poetry.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

Writing poetry, which for me was then saying how I felt about this and that, didn't help me to understand the world I lived in.

Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins.

Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.

If, at a party, I say I'm a poet, people have a hard time responding, almost as if I'd said I'm a priest.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.

There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

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

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.