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
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
Always be a poet, even in prose.
-Charles Baudelaire
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
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
-Walt Whitman
A few moments in a poet’s company teach us more about the essence of art than many a lecture and books.
-Etinne Gilsun
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
-Pablo Neruda
When a poet speaks to his own people, the voices of all other poets of other languages who have influenced him are speaking also.
-T. S. Eliot
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
-W. H. Auden
"The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose: Volume II."
