Believe Quote by Billy Collins

When I began, poetry was very academic. You published little pamphlets from fancy presses. It was rather... chaste. There wasn't much public reading. Then…

— John Fuller

Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.

— Matt de la Pena

I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials.

— May Sarton

I wrote some serious stuff in high school; however, I hadn't been exposed to any of the major poets, not even the minor ones...…

— Anne Sexton

I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things…

— Camille Paglia

Everybody has their own idea of what's a poet. Robert Frost, President Johnson, T.S.Eliot, Rudolf Valentino - they're all poets. I like to think…

— Bob Dylan

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

— Howard Nemerov

I originally went to school for writing, for non-fiction. I'm specifically a poetry major within literature, but I don't know.

— Paloma Elsesser

It wasn't until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I…

— Amanda Gorman

I studied art at Queens College, taking very few courses in literature. But I've always loved reading poetry and grew up enjoying the so-called…

— Douglas Florian

Every poet I know - although there may be some I don't know who lead very different lives, who maybe live in the country…

— Sharon Olds

Would you be a poet Before you've been to school? Ah, well! I hardly thought you So absolute a fool.

— Lewis Carroll