Down and Quote by Charles Bukowski

The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you're - when things are going poorly, when you're not thinking well, even making two…

— Edward Hirsch

You make me want to write bad poetry.

— Anonymous

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

— Paul Valery

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

— James Dickey

I thought poems were songs for people with bad voices.

— Lorna Dee Cervantes

No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.

— Felix Dennis

When something is too beautiful or too terrible or even too funny for words, then it is time for poetry.

— Eve Merriam

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their…

— Randall Jarrell

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

— Norman MacCaig

That is the best instruction you could ever give a poet: whether you're examining a bad line in a poem or a bad motive…

— Alice Oswald

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Poetry is partly sympathy, don't you think? If it's any good, it gets people to think about others' points of view.

— Edwin Morgan