Joseph Brodsky Quotes

I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.

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

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don't read much anymore.

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

You don't have to live in a garage to write great poetry.

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

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.

The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened.

The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.

I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere.

What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

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.

Fred Moten is a poet I really love because he changes who is telling the poem all the time.

Anyone who holds a pen these days thinks he or she is a poet.

I have been writing poetry for a long time now. I started writing in my school days.

I've written poetry most of my life.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.

I discover poetry when I was in elementary school and I was so fascinated by it. Because I realised if you get the right amount of syllables and the right amount of words, in the right rhyme scheme and you put it all together. You make words just bounce of a page.

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.

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

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.