Marianne Moore 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.

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

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

It's not easy to define poetry.

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.

We recognise in the finished art, which is the result of these conditions, the best words in the best order - poetry; and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.

I write them, I don’t explain them.

A book makes claims of literary art.

Everyone is their own kind of poet - you can't miss it when their words are written down.

My own verse is usually free verse. The freer the better.

Attempts to put my poems to music have had disastrous results in all cases. And the poem, if it's written with the ear, already has been set to its own verbal music as it was composed.

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

I love writing, but I have that E. E. Cummings idea that as long as you stay inside the rules of your own world, it doesn't matter what it is.

I love to write poetry.

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

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

Poetry is not an art or a branch of art: it's something more.

I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.

Actually, I'm working on a book of poetry.

The short story has been here and is here and will be here as long as we are.

I was taught that poems don't end, they just kind of stop. There's never an ending to a poem; it's a continuation for later. When I write, I write for me, and I write in poetic form.