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
Quotations
Poet
It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.
-Dejan Stojanović
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
-Edmund Burke
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
-Jean Cocteau
"Le Rappel á l'ordre"
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"
I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.
-Edith Södergran
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
-René Char
Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.
-Allen Ginsberg
All good poems are victories over something.
-Stephen Dunn
