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
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-H. L. Mencken
All good poems are victories over something.
-Stephen Dunn
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"
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 few moments in a poet’s company teach us more about the essence of art than many a lecture and books.
-Etinne Gilsun
If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
-Derek Walcott
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-Alfred De Musset
"Le Poète déchu"
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."
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
