The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what…

I hate French poetry. What measured glitter!

— Israel Zangwill

“And the poet says that by starlight You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked And that he has seen on…

— Arthur Rimbaud

“A true poet does not say 'azure'; a true poet says 'blue.”

— Else Lasker-Schüler

One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it…

— W. H. Auden

“America is a dream. The poet says it was promises. The people say it is promises—that will come true. The people do not always…

— Langston Hughes

Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

— Jeanette Winterson

“In the old days a poet once said" In the old days a poet once said our nation is destroyed yet the mountains and…

— Ko Un

“A poet says, “The libraries of how many a nation did that orphan wipe clean who did not even learn how to read?”

— Muhammad Zakariya Kandhlawi

“I've almost seen him. And Poet," she says, and I want tot say, You have seen him and you didn't want him.”

— Cath Crowley

What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.

— W. H. Auden

There is an old Latin quotation in regard to the poet which says 'Poeta nascitur non fit' the translation of which is- the poet…

— Joseph Devlin

As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of…

— Goldwin Smith

All poetry is misrepresentation.

— Jeremy Bentham

What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is…

— Adrienne Rich

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