A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as possible, but within a quite strict form, which to my ears has a lot to do with musical rhythm and sound.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.

I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.

My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.

When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.

Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally.

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings.

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

Have you ever heard of a pianist who never had to practice - or of an architect who didn't bother to find out why buildings stand up?

Many varieties of sonnet, of course, have been written over the ages.

Writing in a strict form can surprise you.

The sea is as near as we come to another world.

You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

There is no other who experiences your thoughts or your feelings.

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Kinsey would identify himself with Galileo in moments of feelings of persecution.

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

As an alcoholic, you have no appreciation for your wife or your children's feelings, but I'm making up for that now. I'm winning my children's trust back.

A lot of the stuff that I do with Betty is in the eyes. A lot of the feelings that I evoke with her are unspoken, so that's been fun to play with.

Isn't it strange that its easier to be gentle with the feelings of people we care less about than those of our children, whom we love so much?

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

A date once leaned in to kiss me, and he ended up kissing my cheek. He was a little offended, but I didn't want to kiss him just to not hurt his feelings.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

Everything I do is blown out of proportion. It really hurts my feelings.

The story line was done in a way that's organic and was doled out very slowly in little bites. We think that's authentic for this character, that her feelings are very deeply buried or she never felt them.

I'd much rather be in a movie that people have really strong feelings about than one that makes a hundred million dollars but you can't remember because it's just like all the others.

The blues comes right back to a person's feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don't know nothing about the blues, please believe me.

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.

Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.