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The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.
James A. BaldwinCreativity has three layers; the ultimate is the mystic: he lives in a climate of creativity. The poet, once in a while, brings some treasures from the beyond; the scientist, also very rarely, but whenever he can visit the ultimate he brings something precious to the world. But one thing is certain - mystic, scientist or poet, whatsoever comes into this world comes from the beyond. To bring the beyond is creativity. To bring the beyond into the known is creativity. To help God to be manifested in some form is creativity.
RajneeshPoetry examines an emotional truth. It's an experience filtered through the personality of the poet. We look to poetry for visions, not scientific truths. The poet's job is to combine new elements. Explore their melting, seeping into one another.
Diane GlancyIn your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnetโฆThere are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. Thatโs a very strict rhythm or meterโฆAnd each line has to end with a rigid pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnetโฆBut within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wantsโฆYouโre given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.
Madeleine L'EngleImagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless that, like a high ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant. He is tempted to say many things which might better be omitted, or, at least shut up in fewer words.
John DrydenJust as the good actor perform well whatever role the poet assigns, so too must the good man perform whatever Fortune assigns. For she, says Bion, just like a poet, sometimes assigns the leading role, sometimes that of the supporting role; sometimes that of a king, sometimes that of a beggar. Do not, therefore, being a supporting actor, desire the role of the lead.
Bion of BorysthenesTurn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet; for a poet is worse, more servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named.
William CongreveThere are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
Emile ZolaThe difference between a poet and a philosopher is that the poet sees logically and describes basically the beauty whereas the philosopher defines the basics and shows the beauty of logics.
AnujPoetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.
Huston SmithA poet is a poet, whether he rides in a Ford or on a donkey; a sage is a sage, whether he plays golf in New Jersey or bathes in the Ganges, or prays in the desert; and a fool is a fool, whether he be a maharaja or a president of a post-war republic.
Ameen RihaniOne more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe.
Ralph Waldo EmersonA poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
W. H. AudenA poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
Edmond de GoncourtA poet is someone Who can pour Light into a spoon, Then raise it To nourish Your beautiful parched, holy mouth.
HafezBut the lover's power is the poet's power. He can make love from all the common strings with which this world is strung.
Amelia BarrThe antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.
Salvatore QuasimodoAs a film-maker and a poet, I feel it's my duty to be an eye and an antenna to what's happening around me. I always felt a solidarity with those who are desperate and confused and misused and are seeking a way out of it.
Jonas MekasWhat a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.
Barbara KingsolverThe poet dreams of the classroom I dreamed I stood up in class And I said aloud: Teacher, Why is algebra important? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up And I said: Teacher, Iโm weary of the turkeys That we have to draw every fall. May I draw a fox instead? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up once more and said: Teacher, My heart is falling asleep And it wants to wake up. It needs to be outside. Sit down, he said.
Mary OliverAllen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second.
Ken KeseyGardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life.... Fortunate gardener, who may preoccupy himself solely with beauty in these difficult and ugly days! He is one of the few people left in this distressful world to carry on the tradition of elegance and charm. A useless member of society, considered in terms of economics, he must not be denied his rightful place. He deserves to share it, however humbly, with the painter and poet.
Vita Sackville-WestI've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest.
Gerald SternThere are many poets that use as my models. In my first book of poems, I had several for the "Sleepwalkers," I had several poems that were apprentice poems like this in which I take a walk with a poet who is no longer alive.
Edward HirschI try to, at least once or twice a week, have someone over and model, usually a dancer friend or a poet or someone to come over and just stay still for me. Depending on how exhibitionist they are, it will determine the finished work. And I say, "You're the muse; you come up with it. I'll draw you however you want."
Eric DrookerA good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
T. S. EliotThe poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.
Oscar WildeI 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.
Carolyn KizerThe business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel JohnsonI always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.
Mary KarrHe led quite a great life, ... He was an Old Testament figure railing against the establishment - a Jewish guy from New York who became a Buddhist, a poet, a musician.
Tom HaydenThe novel may be dead as a commercial form. When art forms things die as commercial forms, something happens to the practice of those arts that isn't very pleasant. It used to be that a poet like Tennyson could keep his house and his coach-and-four and his staff of six servants on the income from poetry. That doesn't happen anymore.
William MonahanThe solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.
Mieczyslaw JastrunWhat his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.
Barbara TuchmanI do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself.
F. Sionil JosรฉLike a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance, and in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.
Heinrich HeineThe genius of happiness is still so rare. To possess it means to approach life with the humility of a beggar, but to treat it with the proud generosity of a prince; to bring to its totality the deep understanding of a great poet and to each of its moments the abandonment and ingenuousness of a child.
Ellen KeyTo the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI believe that it is important for the artist, painter, poet, dancer, etc. to keep in mind that it is the art that drives the art world and not the other way around. Artists and other people of intelligence have the power to bring deeper content to our culture.
Thornton Willis