No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
Quotations
Poet
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
-Plato
The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.
-Jane Kenyon
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
-George Sand
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
-René Char
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
-Edmond De Goncourt
