The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet:… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is therefore not at all a desirable… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
It has been said that a poem should not mean but be. This is not quite accurate. In a poem, as distinct… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.” — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“for once in our lives / Everything became a You and nothing was an It.” — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this is as… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
