Audience Quote by W. H. Auden

Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't…

— Robert Graves

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

— Walt Whitman

“From the writer's perspective, audience is always an act of the imagination.”

— Billy Marshall Stoneking

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according…

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

At the very beginning when I begin writing a poem I try not to think of the audience or anyone at all except for…

— Rita Dove

“When teachers participate in a literary experience with a professionally presented children's play, they are offering their students a text quite different from anything…

— James Hugh Comey

“Therefore, poets do not 'fit' into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their 'places' seriously. They…

— James P. Carse

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether…

— Peter Davison

The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness.

— Amiri Baraka

“A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his…

— Mark Forsyth

For the kind of places I've written for and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about your audience…

— Louis Menand

“That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them”

— George Bernard Shaw