"Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth."

"A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard becomes Who void of envy, guile and lust of gain, On virtue still and nature's pleasing themes Poured forth his unpremeditated strain."

"A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring"

"The poet… may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather."

"What is his [the poet's] function? Certain it is not to lead people out of the confusion in which they find themselves. nor is it, I think, to comfort them while they follow their readers to and fro. I think that his function is to make his imagination theirs and that he fulfills himself only as he sees his imagination become the light in the minds of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives."

"Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true."

"A poet looks at the world somewhat as a man looks at a woman."

"It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yet the light that shone in them was crescent."

"I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing."

"While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep."

"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled, On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled."

"To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too."

"Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet."

"All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful."

"when people say, “What can poets do?” I often say, “Just what any other working group could do to get anything accomplished, and that is to organize.”"

"half-holy, half-criminal,/or altogether a poet."

"Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind."

"It is indeed astonishing that all are obsessed with poets and cannot tear themselves away from them. You would think that once they were read, that was that. Transcended, as they say now. Nothing could be farther from the truth."

"The authentic artist carries within himself another world to which the ordinary person has no access. The great value of the poet is that he enriches us with new, thoroughly experienced feelings, with unseen or differently seen landscapes."

"σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ."

"Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science."

"Even nowadays an archaic sense of love-innocence recurs, however briefly, among most young men and women. Some few of these, who become poets, remain in love for the rest of their lives, watching the world with a detachment unknown to lawyers, politicians, financiers, and all other ministers of that blind and irresponsible successor to matriarchy and patriarchy — the mechanarchy."

"Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my muse began, with whom shall end."

"Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past."

"At any rate, at his [the God of Love] touch every man becomes a poet "though formerly unvisited by the Muse"."

"To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession."

"For next to being a great poet is the power of understanding one."

"The child alone a poet is: Spring and Fairyland are his. Truth and Reason show but dim, And all's poetry with him."

"You don't have to write anything down to be a poet. Some work in gas stations. Some shine shoes. I don't really call myself one because I don't like the word. Me? I'm a trapeze artist."

"There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. … To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food."

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

"A poem is a naked person . . . some people say that I am a poet."

"There is a pleasure in poetic pains, Which only poets know."

"In this American moment, it's fundamentally queer to be a poet, to be interested in what can't be packaged or sold in the marketplace, queer to enjoy the fundamentally useless, contemplative pleasure of poetry. Queer means that which is not business as usual, not solid identities founded on firm grounds, but a world in question."

"The poet is a truth bearer of reality and image. We live in a society of denial that doesn't want to see or hear these truth tales, so consequently poets are shunned to a great degree because people don't always want to hear the truth...In the old days poets used to go into the factories and the sugar and tobacco plantations and recite to the workers while they were doing their thing. No more. Perhaps it's a fear of intelligence, of language. A fear of self-realization."

"For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."

"A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams."

"The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood."

"Mother and poetess do not rhyme, but they go together rather well."

"A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses."

"For a man to become a poet (witness Petrarch and Dante), he must be in love, or miserable."

"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."

"I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds."

"A great poet belongs to no country ; his works are public property, and his Memoirs the inheritance of the public."

"Poets and anarchists are always the first to go. Where. To the frontline. Wherever it is."

""There's nothing great Nor small," has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin's bell."

"God's prophets of the Beautiful, These Poets were."

"Always be a poet, even in prose."

"Poets don't drive. Never trust a poet who can drive. Never trust a poet at the wheel. If he can drive, distrust the poems."

"Poets are all who love, — who feel great truths, And tell them."