Poet Quotes
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I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
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Being ruled by a depraved poet-king who is sacrified each spring is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
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What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.
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If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.
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Well, you could almost say, I suppose, that the scientist seeks what is similar between any two days, or bluebirds, or glaciers. And the poet seeks what is different. The artist seeks to celebrate the unique.
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I'm from Chicago, so the Chicago working-class poets still mean a great deal to me.
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How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.
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I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.
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I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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Making films is about having absolute and foolish confidence; the challenge for all of us is to have the heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant.
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The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.
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Poets can tell the truth as they see it. It’s the author’s story, the author’s voice.
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The starving poet business is no good nowadays.
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An occasion, catalyst, or tripwire?permits the poet to reach into herself and haul up whatever nugget of the human condition distracts her at the moment, something that can't be reached in any other way.
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Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.
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Every dude in your high school wasn't striving to be the best poet because then he'd get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.
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The words are the mirror of a poet. Through which you can see the reflection of himself.
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To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.
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When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life.
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There was nothing to do but wait. It is always like this for naturalists, and for poets--the long hours of travel and preparation, and then the longer hours of waiting. All for that one electric, pulse-revving vision when the universe suddenly declares itself.
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Technological prescience in science fiction usually requires an author with luck. Societal prescience requires a poet.
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Mind and body are not to be taken lightly. Their connection is intimate and mysterious, and better mapped by poets than pornographers.
