Critical Quote by Michael Longley

“A poem isn't a good poem, until you need it.”

— J. David Gray

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.

— Wallace Stevens

A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way…

— Dorianne Laux

A poem is an instant of lucidity in which the entire organism participates.

— Charles Simic

Poems seem to have a life of their own. They tell you when enough is enough.

— Thomas Lynch

A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth.

— Edgar Allan Poe

In every good poem everything must be both deliberate and instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.

— Karl Kraus

“The fact that a good poem will never wholly submit to explanation is not its deficiency but its very life. One lives every day…

— John Ciardi

“Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that…

— Bryant McGill

“Some people react physically to the magic of poetry, to the moments, that is, of authentic revelation, of the communication, the sharing , at…

— Dylan Thomas

A good poem is an amazing thing: a perfectly distilled, articulate moment. It opens you up - sometimes slowly, like the blooming of a…

— Celeste Ng