What Is Poet Quotes

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

If there ever was a poet for the working class Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard would be my nomination

Out of the ruined lodge and forgotten mansion, bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasure-houses that are dust, the poet calls up a palingenesis.

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.

In most men there exists a poet who died young, whom the man survived.

Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage; as frost sufficiently intense, according to the poet Milton, will burn.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

Poets are band leaders who have failed.

I’m not a poet—I’m a drifter in the arts.

Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.

Who could imagine a poet wearing anything other than black?

Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

Scientist alone is true poet.

As a poet I would say everything should be able to come into a poem but I can't put toothbrushes in a poem. I really can't.

Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?

Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it.

The 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.

Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.

This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.

...the poet, while creating anew, is likely to be in a sense restoring something old.

For as fire is kindled by fire, so is a poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.

I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened.

For if anything is capable of making a poet of a literary man, it is my hometown love of the human, the living and ordinary.

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.

She can't help it,' he said. 'She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.

Kierkegaard was once asked, 'What is a poet?' He answered that a poet was an unhappy man whose moans and cries of anguish were transformed into ravishing music.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

You will find the poet who wrings the heart of the world, or the foremost captain of his time, driving a bargain or paring a potato, just as you would do.

Paul Valery speaks of the 'une ligne donnee' of a poem. One line is given to the poet by God or by nature, the rest he has to discover for himself.

The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage.

A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.

That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face - that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.

For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.

Everybody has their own idea of what's a poet. Robert Frost, President Johnson, T.S.Eliot, Rudolf Valentino - they're all poets. I like to think of myself as the one who carries the light bulb.

There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world.