Arriving Quote by Carol Ann Duffy

I don't know where the shape of a poem comes from. I certainly don't impose it. I write out of a jumble of emotions…

— Michael Longley

There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness.

— Dana Goodyear

It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the poem is…

— Mark Strand

Usually a poem takes shape accoustically - a line or a pair of lines will repeat itself in my ear.

— Thomas Lynch

I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape can be…

— Matthea Harvey

Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all…

— Lauren Oliver

For me, form is something I locate in the process of writing the poems. What I mean is, I start scribbling, and then try…

— Matthew Zapruder

Poetry is prose, bent out of shape.

— J. Patrick Lewis

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

— Denise Levertov

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

— Robert Hayden

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

— Howard Nemerov

The 'idea' for the poem, which may come as an image thrown against memory, as a sound of words that sets off a traveling…

— Muriel Rukeyser