You don't have to suffer to be a poet

I fell in love with social work, and that was my undoing as a poet.

— Carl Rakosi

A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the…

— Samuel R. Delany

Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the…

— Washington Irving

“Without pain, poetry is not possible.”

— seerat

“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of…

— Henry David Thoreau

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early…

— Umberto Eco

The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is…

— Norman Cousins

“The poet is just like the fabled hunter who naps beside a tree, waiting for hares to break their skulls by running headlong into…

— Gu Cheng

Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our…

— Richard M. Weaver

“A poet is someone who can pour light into a cup, then raise it to nourish your beautiful parched, holy mouth.”

— Hafiz

Defeat furnishes good material to the poets and the artists, but none of us care to have the glory of the conquered apply to…

— Susan Glaspell

Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

— Edith Hamilton

“If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.…

— J.D. Salinger

One of my favorite poets, Neruda, writes close to the bone. Though I know only a little Spanish, I like to compare the Spanish…

— Anita Diament

I've always written. When I was in school, the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter…

— Justin Townes Earle