When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.

When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.

And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.

Their free verse was no form at all, yet it made history.

The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?

He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form.

It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things.

For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties.

Or he can work it out as a metrical and formal exercise, but he will be disappointed in its content. The New Year's prospect fairly chills his daunting breast.

And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.

Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes.

But we moderns are impatient and destructive.

Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.

Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old.

I wonder what all those Chinese poets sound like in Chinese. I like their distilled quality.

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.

A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

Poets are born, not paid.

Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.

At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age.

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.

And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.

I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets.

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say, your professional poets, I mean there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed.

Travelers are like poets. They are mostly an angry race.