Books Quote by Archibald MacLeish

If the poem can be improved by the author's explanations, it never should have been published.

— Archibald MacLeish

No man can be explained by his personal history, least of all a poet.

— Katherine Anne Porter

A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him…

— Paul Valery

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.

— Eugenio Montale

“The fact that a good poem will never wholly submit to explanation is not its deficiency but its very life. One lives every day…

— John Ciardi

He does not write at all whose poems no man reads

— Marcus Aurelius

“A poet writing poetry, an artist creating calligraphy. An author scripting mastery with an encyclopedia intellect. From from a derelict's viewpoint, that can only…

— Jr. Lily

And why should any man who writes, even if he writes things immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish?…

— George Gissing

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

— William Butler Yeats

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the…

— William Faulkner

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

— Henry David Thoreau

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.

— Anonymous