poetic endeavor Quotes

To be a poet did not occur to me. It was indeed a threshold guarded by demons.

Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end.

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

My advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world - unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

Poetry is a mug's game.

For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.

A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.

I dabbled in verse and it became my life

Once a year I try writing a poem, usually because I've read some poetry that amazed me and I want to do that.

I think the culture can absorb so many people writing poetry and trying to earn their living in poetry.

Poets, if they're genuine, must keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvre.

To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off.

I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortés.

It occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score.