Architecture Quote by William Shenstone

At each moment, a poem might grow into a totally different shape. It is not so much like working in a garden. It is…

— Alice Oswald

“An unfinished poem is a half-built house, windows of air through the scaffolding.”

— Jacob Oet

It's a beautiful aspect of narrative construction, hunting for the right images and metaphors to render our character's hearts/minds/souls as though they're ecosystems, full-fledged…

— Joshua Mohr

Place is extremely important to my work because I am always pulling landscape imagery into my poems.

— Cate Marvin

“I love the echoes of a home filled to the rim with poetry, books and art.”

— Melody Lee

The pleasure that I take in writing gets me interested in writing a poem. It's not a statement about what I think anybody else…

— Marilyn Hacker

Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are…

— Anne Sexton

Never discuss the poem you contemplate writing. It's like turning on the outside spigot. It takes all the pressure off the upstairs bathroom.

— Robert Frost

It isn't so unusual for poems to situate themselves out of doors - though they may, at the same time, be set in an…

— Robert Bringhurst

“That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism…

— Samuel Johnson

Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed…

— John Drinkwater

A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats's odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in a palace:…

— James Fenton