Choices Quote by Joseph Brodsky

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this…

— Joseph Brodsky

There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek…

— Octavio Paz

If the poet can no longer speak for society, but only for himself, then we are at the last ditch.

— Henry Miller

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

— Tony Harrison

I think it is our job as poets to refuse the terms that society so often sets for usefulness. That, for instance, is what…

— Matthew Zapruder

“Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing…

— Ted Kooser

You can't argue with someone who believes, or just passionately suspects, that the poet's function is not to write what he must write but,…

— Anonymous

“Therefore, poets do not 'fit' into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their 'places' seriously. They…

— James P. Carse

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

— W. H. Auden

It is no use thinking that writing of poems - the actual writing - can accommodate itself to a social setting, even the most…

— Mary Oliver

“Life in society is when everyone is there and no one is present. Life in society is when everyone obeys what no one wants.…

— Christian Bobin

“…the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society’ll be mired…

— Tom Robbins