In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my…

Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today's stranger interpretations of the essay and say "You…

— John D'Agata

I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I…

— Stephen Dunn

I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging.

— Dorianne Laux

[Abbas Kiarostami] is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes…

— Anthony Minghella

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

— Michael Faraday

Yes, you can feel very alone as a poet and you sometimes think, is it worth it? Is it worth carrying on? But because…

— Roger McGough

Is T.S. Eliot the only poet one can think of who could have spent a year on his own in Paris at twenty-three—and managed…

— David Markson

I dream of a collaboration that will become so complete that, often, the poet will think as musician and the musician as poet, so…

— Arthur Honegger

“But how are you going to get out, into the world of other people? That is your problem now, if I may hazard a…

— Virginia Woolf

The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness.

— Amiri Baraka

Housman is one of my heroes and always has been. He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on,…

— A. E. Housman

I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not.

— Frank O'Hara

I wanted to create an environment in which more than just personal essays could be represented, and in which stranger approaches to making essays…

— John D'Agata

I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the…

— John D'Agata

I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

— John D'Agata