Basements Quote by John Ashbery

“A poem was a box for your soul. That was the point. It was the place where you could save bits of yourself, and…

— Andrea Ashworth

“The Poet" His teeth splayed in a way he'd notice and pity in his closest enemies or friends. Youth held his eye; he blinked…

— Robert Lowell

“The poets carry feelings, delivering desires and dispatching dreams. Even if sometimes they need pack some sorrows, distill several disappointments and filter strange nightmares.”

— Juliano Alves

A poem's life and death dependeth still Not on the poet's wits, but reader's will.

— Alexander Brome

To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment…

— Samuel Johnson

“A poem was a box for your soul. That was the point. It was the place where you could save bits of yourself, and…

— Andrea Ashworth

“There’s only the writing, which I admit to knowing very little about. But then it’s probably best not to know. It allows one to…

— Russell Edson

“A poet in his senses knocks vainly at the gates of poetry.”

— Ben Johnson

Poetry is the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of despair and into the light.

— Gregory Orr

“I say I think my poems now are finer than anything I've ever done; I only hope that is the judgement of a ruined…

— Samuel R. Delany

“She ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to…

— Jane Austen

“Some poems take us places where no words reach, no thought, they take you up to the core itself, life stops for one moment…

— Jón Kalman Stefánsson