Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

My kids are normal. If they could eat burgers and fries and ice cream every day, they would. And so would I. But that doesn’t sustain us.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

I read poetry to save time.

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

At my advanced age – I’m now an octogenarian – I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

I’m really a normal football manager.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

Disagreement is something normal.

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

I don’t really have any gimmicks. I don’t actually do anything that’s strange. I don’t even wear weird things.

They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.

I’m nobody, who are you?