Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what…

The whole process of having to put the thing into the world seems so antithetical to the act of writing. Poetry is slightly easier,…

— Nick Laird

“fearing nothing but the unknown in a world of mysterious wonder.”

— John Fante

A dream is a massive magic trick of the mind. No amount of science could explain away the mysterious wonder.

— Dave Matthews

The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you're - when things are going poorly, when you're not thinking well, even making two…

— Edward Hirsch

I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that…

— Billy Collins

Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.

— Mary Oliver

Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

— Jeremy Bentham

The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.

— Wendy Cope

Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.

— Oscar Wilde

Poetry is the memory of language

— Jacques Roubaud

Poetry is the dark side of the moon,

— Charles Wright

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