Admitting Quote by Ben Lerner

I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I…

— Stephen Dunn

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

— Edmund Wilson

Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were…

— Wislawa Szymborska

I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I wanted to be a poem.

— Jaime Gil de Biedma

I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word.

— Bob Dylan

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good…

— Edward Hirsch

Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny…

— Tracy K. Smith

I am a poet, and I speak poetically.

— KRS-One

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

— Robert Graves

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not…

— Edward Hirsch

I'm not a poet. I wish I was a poet but I'm not. I'm a playwright. And so I have a different set of…

— Tony Kushner