Books Quote by W. H. Auden

“If anything can be said in prose, then poetry should be saved for saying nothing.”

— Pierre Albert-Birot

One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it…

— W. H. Auden

“Once a poet, always a poet.”

— Catherine McKenzie

A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

— W. H. Auden

He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.

— Thomas Carlyle

“no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.”

— W.H. Auden

“Accuracy is sacrificed in the name of better poetry.”

— N.K. Jemisin

“A genuine poet is one who writes about experiences before they happen to him.”

— T.S Eliot

“also, the oldest notion still in vogue is that if you can’t understand a poem then it almost certainly is a good one.”

— Charles Bukowski

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No.…

— Mark Twain

“A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no identity-he is continually infirming and filling some other body.”

— John Keats

“The poet is individual—he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not.”

— Walt Whitman