#poe

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry. ↗

— Chinua Achebe

#beautiful #chaotic #flow #heart #his

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. ↗

— Diane Ackerman

#emotions #language #lie #metaphorically #moods

As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree,' probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. ↗

— Woody Allen

#bark #because #figure #get #god

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#along #comes #every #five #hundred

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#leads #our #poetry #rational #refreshed

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.' ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#ask #correction #disorder #expect #linguistic

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#deduction #generated #judgement #laws #may

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#anticipations #cannot #day #day to day #each

"Therefore" is a word the poet must not know. ↗

— Andre Gide

#know #must #poet #therefore #word

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do. ↗

— David Antin

#hard #hardly #how #i #imagine