Poetic Integrity Quotes

If a poet would influence politics he must join a party, and then he is lost as a poet: goodbye to his free spirit and his open mind.

I can't tear up a poem and be a sound bite for you. Why is that so hard for anyone to understand?

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

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.

I happen to believe that there are a lot of good poets around at present, but a poet like Alex Kuo, who possesses a highly developed moral sense and a bitter honesty, is rare at any time and especially in this time. We need him.

The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity.

In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake.

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

Not gods, nor men, nor even booksellers have put up with poets' being second-rate.

To a poet, it's quite ruinous to have a poem distorted, out of shape, or squeezed, shall we say, into this tiny screen. But I'm not sure big digital companies are sensitive to the needs of poets.

If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a good poet without first being a good man.

The first question at that time in poetry was simply the question of honesty, of sincerity.

There are poets who believe that you shouldn't engage at all in any cause. And there's something to be said for that. Because you don't want to - I think most political poetry is very bad. And it's very bad because you know too much to start with. You have a sense that you're right, and you're trying to tell other people what's right. And I think that's always kind of fundamentalism, and I don't like it.

It's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition' or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.

I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.

Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.

If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party; and so soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet.

You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

The poet who does not revere his art, and believe in its sovereignty, is not born to wear the purple.