Peter Davison Quotes

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.

'A collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival.

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.

I think people turn to poetry more often than they think they do, or encounter it in more ways than they think that they do. I think we forget the places that we encounter it, say, in songs or in other little bits and pieces of things that we may have remembered from childhood.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Poetry is necessary, but is the poet?

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

Poets are born, not paid.

Could I have chosen my own genius, I should have made myself a great poet.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

I've written poetry most of my life.

To the poet, his travels, his adventures, his loves, his indignations are finally resolved in verse, and this, in the end becomes his permanent, indestructible life.

My books and other works are my legacy, and it's a great comfort to know that mine is a legacy of pleasure for other people.

Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

A hundred cabinet-makers in London can work a table or a chair equally well; but no one poet can write verses with such spirit and elegance as Mr. Pope.

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed.

There is but one poetry,--true poetry.

For poets (bear the word) Half-poets even, are still whole democrats.

I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for.

I have never considered myself a poet. Therefore, I am not a rival of anyone, and I do not consider anybody my rival.