Poet's Role Quotes

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

The best poems come from the world, go through the poet, and go back in to the world.

I'm a poet,' the young man said, 'And it's my job to remember the sadness of things.

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity he is continually informing and filling some other body.

In order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it.

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

The Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society.

He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.

As the poet has expected, the alarms now are sounded, for - and it must be said again - the birth of a poet is always a threat to the existing cultural order, because he attempts to break through the circle of literary castes to reach the center.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.

I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet.

From the beginning, about the rude altar of the god, to the days of Goethe, of Leopardi, and of Victor Hugo, the poet is the leader in the dance of life; and the phrase by which we name his singularity, the poetic temperament, denotes the primacy of that passion in his blood with which the frame of other men is less richly charged.

There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.

Was ever poet so trusted before?

The poet is always our contemporary.

I didn't read poetry seriously until college, when I really began to devour it in a very intense way. I also discovered that a poet is a maker. Before that, I thought a poet was someone who wrote about his own experiences.

The poet's place, it seems to me, is with the Mr. Hydes of human nature.

The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness.

Most joyful let the Poet be, it is through him that all men see.

To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.

We ask the poet: 'What subject have you chosen?' instead of: 'What subject has chosen you?

Poetry is necessary, but is the poet?

The poet is like the earth's shadow. The sun moves, and the poet writes something down.