Billy Collins Quotes

Poets take themselves very seriously.

Poetry is really a way of sharing feelings and ideas.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

I keep trying to define 'poetry,' but it's so difficult.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

I consider a poem to be a kind of experiment where a number of elements are brought together under test conditions to see how they will interact to create meaning or relevance.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.

And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

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

What has always attracted me in life is poetry. Any genre can have poetry. For me, poetry contains truth.

Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

It's not easy to define poetry.

Poetry is more a threshold than a path.