Capable Quote by Rita Dove

People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I…

— Rita Dove

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

— Rita Dove

I've written on public matters, but I don't understand how anyone could tout me as a possible poet laureate when I wrote a poem…

— Tony Harrison

Pretty much the day I stopped being laureate, the poems that had been few and far between came back to me, like birds in…

— Andrew Motion

It wasn't until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I…

— Amanda Gorman

As poet laureate, I was asked to be a spokesman for literature.

— Robert Hass

To be poet laureate is to try to spread the love and the accessibility of poetry to young people.

— Jacqueline Woodson

If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality…

— Ben Lerner

I really wanted to be a poet - until I realized that I really didn't have what it took to be a poet.

— Celeste Ng

Anybody who instantly goes from being a poet and a graduate student to being a public figure has to be in a state of…

— Erica Jong

At college, I wanted to be a poet. I liked the extremely concentrated language, the atmosphere of otherworldliness.

— Walter Kirn

You don't have to be a poet, you don't have to be a politician or be in the White House to make an impact…

— Amanda Gorman