Able Quote by Charles Baudelaire

“The poet is individual—he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not.”

— Walt Whitman

The solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.

— Mieczyslaw Jastrun

Poetry's role is to provide spontaneous individual candor as distinct from manipulation and brainwash.

— Allen Ginsberg

A poet must sing for his own people.

— Edmund Clarence Stedman

“poet convinced both of his own talent and of the need to be self-indulgent in order to be a great artist.”

— Walter Isaacson

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except…

— Anonymous

“A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his…

— Mark Forsyth

“The essential advantage for a poet is not to have a beautiful world with which to deal; it is to be able to see…

— T.S. Eliot

The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is…

— Wallace Stevens

“Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into…

— Thomas Carlyle

One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a…

— Christian Wiman

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley