On the subject of literary genres, I’ve always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I’d love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

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

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

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

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

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

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

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

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

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

I don’t think of poetry as a ‚rational‘ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

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.

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

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

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

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.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

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

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

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

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

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

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

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.

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

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

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

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

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

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.

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.