Poetic Freedom Quotes

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.

There is no Sixth Commandment in art. The poet is entitled to lay his hands on whatever material he finds necessary for his work.

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

Every poet, be his outward lot what it may, finds himself born in the midst of prose; h e has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.

Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything! We know that, and we both claim and allow to others in their turn this indulgence.

Oh! blame not the bard.

The freedom of poetic license.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm.

American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.

I believe the best poetry of our times is growing too artistic; the study is too visible. If freedom and naturalness are lost out of poetry, everything worth having is lost.

I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can't afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.

Bottom line, I have to follow what my soul says, or my spirit. And my spirit said that poetry and the arts should be without borders, should be without political borders.

Poets are always making waves. I mean, you know, in an ideal situation, the ideal republic can't tolerate poets because - it isn't that they mutter and criticize; it is that the poet does not accept the situation called the 'perfect' condition of man - in other words, perfect in the materialistic sense.

To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

...these poets here, you see, they are not of this world:let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet…There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter…And each line has to end with a rigid pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet…But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants…You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last.