Clicks Quote by Frederick Seidel

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think…

— Maya Angelou

“...a poem is only finished when the last reader has read it or listened to it.”

— Cees Nooteboom

I was taught that poems don't end, they just kind of stop. There's never an ending to a poem; it's a continuation for later.…

— Goldlink

“A poem isn't finished until it's heard.”

— Jade Foster

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful…

— Kenneth Koch

A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.

— Mary Ruefle

I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times…

— Billy Collins

Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what…

— Dana Gioia

Poetry takes place in time. It is a durational. Things take place in sequence.

— Edward Hirsch

Poetry is like painting: one piece takes your fancy if you stand close to it, another if you keep at some distance.

— Horace

To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't…

— John Steinbeck

The true poem rests between the words.

— Vanna Bonta