Chance Quote by W. H. Auden

“One cannot say that a major poet writes better poems than a minor; on the contrary the chances are that, in the course of…

— W.H. Auden

I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very…

— Edward Hirsch

No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer…

— Ezra Pound

I think that in the process of writing, all kinds of unexpected things happen that shift the poet away from his plan and that…

— John Ashbery

Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility…

— T. S. Eliot

I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader…

— Lydia Davis

...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

— Samuel Johnson

I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may…

— H. L. Mencken

“Now, you might think that because there are more poets than ever, there might be more opportunities for poets than ever. And you’d be…

— Jim Behrle

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.

— T. S. Eliot

To be a good poet, you must care more about the writing, than the writer.

— Lucille Clifton

It's difficult to put your own bare ass out on the limb every time you sit down to write a poem. But that's really…

— Sam Hamill