Done Quote by May Sarton

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

— Helen Vendler

Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem.

— Marvin Bell

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying…

— Denise Duhamel

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover…

— Rita Dove

A poem has a certain - a different time. For instance, a poem is a very private experience, and it doesn't have a driving…

— Leonard Cohen

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

— James Schuyler

For me poems are acts re-done, and that can vibrate well into the future.

— Anne Waldman

Poetry, I thought then, and still do, is a matter of space on the page interrupted by a few well-chosen words, to give them…

— Fay Weldon

It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.

— Peter Davison

Poetry requires deliberate movement in its direction, a filament of faith in its persistence, receptivity to its fundamental worthwhileness. Within its unanesthetized heart there…

— C.D. Wright

When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No,…

— W. S. Merwin

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

— Randall Jarrell