Poets on Poetry - A Collection of Quotes

As an aspiring writer, I've found inspiration in a myriad of places. Things I've heard, I've seen, I've experienced, I've felt, I've learned and the same related by others all have been found as inspiration for me. This is true of all writers, I suspect.

The writings of others, especially poets are, of course, a great source of inspiration. Not just the fruit of their efforts, the poetry itself, but their thoughts and musings on the writing of poetry. Here are some quotes that have been meaningful to me that I hope may also be for you. Some are practical, others I can personally relate to, some are profound, some just make me chuckle. Maybe they will become a source of inspiration for you as they have me.

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.” - Wallace Stevens

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” - Robert Frost

“Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.” - Dennis Gabor

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” - G.K. Chesterton

“I write poetry in order to live more fully.” - Judith Rodriguez

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are—until the poem—nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.” - Audre Lorde

“You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick . . .. You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps . . . so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. “ - Dylan Thomas

“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” - Novalis

“I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.” - Carl Sandburg

“Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.” - A. E. Housman

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
- Leonard Cohen

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.” - Carl Sandburg

“The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.“ - Robert Penn Warren

“The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.” - Jean Cocteau

“I have never started a poem whose end I knew. Writing the poem is discovering.” - Robert Frost

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” - William Butler Yeats

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” - T. S. Eliot

“I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; - poetry; the best words in the best order.” - S. T. Coleridge

“Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.” - Charles Simic