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
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-Alfred De Musset
"Le Poète déchu"
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
-René Char
Always be a poet, even in prose.
-Charles Baudelaire
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
Poets create gods, philosophers destroy them.
-Marty Rubin
Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.
-Dorothy L. Sayers
"Busman's Honeymoon"
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
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
