Poetic Reception Quotes

The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.

I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word 'accessible.'

Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

Poets are accepted in Canada as practically nowhere else in the West because of their place in an officially supported and popularly endorsed Canadian culture. Yet, they are still bitter and argumentative, as poets elsewhere are, because they have no audience as such, only a sanctioned role in the cultural scheme of things.

My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

Ooh, it's too embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well-received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so inept.

Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what matters is what a reader actually finds there which is usually something both more and less than the poet planned.