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"
Quotations
Poet
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
-Jean Cocteau
If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
-Derek Walcott
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
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
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
-René Char
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
Poets are never unemployed, just unpaid.
-Kathy Skaggs
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
-Criss Jami
