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
Poets create gods, philosophers destroy them.
-Marty Rubin
Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.
-Antoine De Saint Exupéry
A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.
-Jay Z
"Decoded"
If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
-Derek Walcott
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
-Jean Cocteau
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
-Criss Jami
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
