Community Quote by Matthew Zapruder

It is funny, and also a bit sad, that poets are so often asked to justify our vocation. There seems to be something vaguely…

— Matthew Zapruder

Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to…

— Martha Ronk

It is my belief that many who think they dislike poetry are really poetical in their natures and are indebted to it, more than…

— Orson F. Whitney

Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no…

— William Carlos Williams

I do think most poets are in denial about what the real taboos in writing are--the real boundaries.

— Katy Lederer

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

The fact that poetry is not of the slightest economic or political importance, that is has no attachment to any of the powers that…

— Graham Hough

I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from -…

— Eavan Boland

I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

I did not know that 'poetess' was an insult, and that I myself would some day be called one. I did not know that…

— Margaret Atwood

Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and…

— Wislawa Szymborska

Well, it's a badge of honour for any self-respecting poet to be criticized by Auberon Waugh. But in a lot of ways my poems…

— Andrew Motion