Inspirational Quote by Wallace Stevens

Writing a poem is a more personal experience, I think, than writing prose. And perhaps reading a poem is a more personal experience than…

— Nick Laird

Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind.

— Edward Hirsch

There's something immediate about the experience of reading a poem. It makes sense in my own mind, but I'm trying to figure out a…

— Kevin Powers

Poetry can magnify experience.

— May Swenson

“To write or read a poem is . . . to enter into a different kind of thought world from our normal patterns. A…

— N.T. Wright

For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)-they are experiences.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of…

— Edward Hirsch

One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.

— Jane Hirshfield

“Poetry is a language adequate to one's experience.”

— Jay Parini

I'm not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.

— Billy Squier

A poem is what the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text.

— Louise Rosenblatt

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

— Anonymous