Doe Quote by Allen Tate

I don't know where a poem comes from until after I've lived with it a long time. I've a notion that a poem comes…

— Donald Hall

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

— B. F. Skinner

Poems, to me, do not come from ideas, they come from a series of images that you tuck away in the back of your…

— Carolyn Kizer

What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.

— Allen Tate

The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.

— Margaret Walker

Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know…

— Pablo Neruda

I write from the various experiences I live. Not every poem comes from my personal experience, though. It could be something that a friend…

— Rupi Kaur

Writing poetry is a process of discovery...you can smell the poem before you see it…Like some animal.

— Denise Levertov

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific…

— Margaret Atwood

As we all know, poets are born brain-wired a certain way and every poet I know wrote as a child. I'm no exception.

— Grace Cavalieri

In order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it.

— Antonio Machado

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason…

— A. R. Ammons