Books Quote by Jorie Graham

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what…

— Allen Ginsberg

True poetry ought to be secret and clandestine, concealed like a prohibited voice of dissent, while at the same time it should speak to…

— Claudio Magris

A poet is not a public figure. A poet should be read and not seen.

— Cecil Day-Lewis

I never deny poems when they come; whatever I am doing, whatever I am writing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving…

— Amy Lowell

Sometimes you have to be less ashamed about writing a bad poem than you would be about being silent.

— Robert Hass

It is always better to write for the whole of society than for the poetry-reading public.

— Tony Harrison

Poetry is telling something to someone.

— Marie Howe

Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the…

— Jane Hirshfield

A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it.

— Randall Jarrell

Poems, like dreams, are a sort of royal road to the unconscious. They tell you what your secret self cannot express.

— Erica Jong

Once considered an art form that called for talent, or at least a craft that called for practice, a poem now needs only sincerity.…

— Barbara Holland

I don't think any poetry is written that isn't primarily written to the self, in a way... I'm always talking to myself. But I…

— Kay Ryan