poets

We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936

see T. S. Eliot, 'Yeats the Poet' and W. H. Auden, 'Yeats the Poet'

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

Irish poets, learn your trade, Sing whatever is well made.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a "suspension of belief." A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.