Happens Quote by Billy Collins

Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time…

— Billy Collins

Poetry is indispensable --if I only knew what for.

— Jean Cocteau

I didn't want to deal in poetry. I got rid of that after a few months.

— Tom Wesselmann

Poetry is a hazardous occupation, very hazardous. There may be bad things in there inside you that maybe you can't handle.

— James Dickey

Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never…

— David Whyte

You litter poems with too much learning when you're younger.

— Tony Harrison

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

— Anne Stevenson

We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet…

— Adrienne Rich

Poetry can cause irreparable harm when misapplied

— Gail Carriger

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

— Carl Sandburg

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you've got to burn…

— Sylvia Plath

Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

— Russell Baker