Ifs Quote by Kenneth Koch

I don't try to call myself a poet. But I know that my stuff is pretty literal, in that the themes are pretty simple…

— Bo Burnham

Sometimes, I think the best kind of poem is one in which there is an acute balance between what is humorous and that which…

— N. Scott Momaday

I cannot say I'm a poet. That's for someone when they take in consideration where they can bestow 'poet' on. I can't do it.…

— Rodney Crowell

“Poetry rhymes, a song our souls need to nourish upon. Poetry is a drum, a sound our bodies wish to have. Poetry is organized,…

— Gloria D. Gonsalves

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.

— Bernie Taupin

But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have…

— Louise Bogan

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of…

— Philip Larkin

I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.

— Mike Gordon

Sometimes my poetry is an attempt to keep off existential terror; sometimes it is a grappling with philosophical problems; sometimes just fun.

— Gwen Harwood

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

— Seamus Heaney

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline, you've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space that you've just got…

— Sylvia Plath

Poetry is my understanding with the world, my intimacy with things, my participation in what is real, my engagement with voices and images. This…

— Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen