I do not remember where I read that there are two kinds of poets: the good poets, who at a certain point destroy their bad poems and go off to run guns in Africa, and the bad poets, who publish theirs and keep writing more until they die.
I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's.
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
A poet can't afford to be aloof. The tools of his trade are the people he bumps up against.
I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.
I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.
I always have a backpack. I was a poet, so it reminds me of being a backpack poet.
My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was being lost. One of my earliest poems, 'Give and Take,' was about my Aunt Sugar, how I was losing her to her memory loss.
He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.
But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.
My wife is a big fan of George Oppen and I got into him. I could have a career like his. It's not an alpha male situation, George Oppen. It's quiet. It's poetry.He just lived a life of an intellectual poet.
About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.
It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.
There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life in poetry that they're not going to be able to find.
To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.
You don't become a poet if you want to make any money.
