Poems should be like pins which prick the skin of boredom…

“She loved to read her old poems. They are like photographs, she thought. There’s so much evidence of me.”

— Leopoldine Core

Look at Allen Ginsberg. In poems like 'Kaddish' and 'Howl,' you can hear a cantor between the lines. It's fully alive, and I think…

— Derek Walcott

I'm an old man, and I want to lay out what I think I understand. With poems like "Traitor," I'm examining my feelings, my…

— Dan Burt

Some poems are like the Centaurs--a mingling of man and beast, and begotten of Ixion on a cloud.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know.

— Adrienne Rich

Most of the time, comparing printed song lyrics with poems is like comparing recipes with food: that's to say, patently unfair.

— Jonathan Miles

Lizzie Harris's Stop Wanting is an unflinching book about a girlhood filled with violence, doubt, vulnerability, and loss. These gorgeously crafted and hauntingly memorable…

— Rachel Zucker

Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.

— Nikki Giovanni

Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.

— May Sarton

My poems - like my family life, my life with friends, my teaching - these things express who I am. I don't feel any…

— Robert Pinsky

Your poems are like God's birds; they fly into people's hearts.

— Maia Wojciechowska

I write poems like some people sing in the bathroom.

— Amit Bhatia

I would like to talk about poems like I talk about football.

— Frank Skinner

Gradually I became aware that professing English because I loved poems was like practicing vivisection because I loved dogs.

— Michael Donaghy

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never…

— Benjamin Alire Saenz