Leo Connellan has retained his soul and voice in Provincetown and Other Poems. Votes: 3
Karl ShapiroGinsberg's Collected Poems contains a wonderful poem about making it with Neal Cassady. Votes: 3
Thom GunnPoems tend to have instructions for how to read them embedded in their language. Votes: 3
Matthea HarveyPoems have their own fates, like children. You have only to give birth to them. Votes: 3
Andrei VoznesenskyPoems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world. Votes: 3
Frances MayesPoems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril Votes: 3
Andrew MotionLeaving Verses Poems Quotes To say goodbye Isn't a pain Unless you're never going...! (Tee hee) Votes: 3
John Walter BrattonPoems are the 'daredevil' of writing because a poem will say what nobody else wants to say. Votes: 3
Ralph FletcherPoetry gives us courage and sets us straight with the world. Poems are great companions and friends. Votes: 3
David WhyteTo see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lieâ True Poems fleeâ Votes: 3
Emily DickinsonEarly on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide. Votes: 1
Jack NicholsonExistence itself is nothing if not an amazement. Good poems restore amazement. Votes: 0
Jane HirshfieldSouthern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems. Votes: 0
Robert MorganSandra Kasturi's magical poems transform the ordinary into the surreal and exotic. Votes: 0
Phyllis GotliebMany of the poems weave autobiographical elements with fabular or mythic materials. Votes: 0
Anna JourneyHumor is essential to survival. Funny poems are vastly underrated. Very underwritten. Votes: 0
Rachel ZuckerThe great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems. Votes: 0
Antonio MachadoThere's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't. Votes: 0
Jeffrey McDanielSometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems. Votes: 0
John BartonBut I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems. Votes: 0
Andrew MotionSince the age of 11, I have loved writing poems and fragments from my life. Votes: 0
Niki de St. PhalleI prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. Votes: 0
Wislawa SzymborskaBy reason of weird translation, many such sets of instructions read like poems anyhow. Votes: 0
Brian FerneyhoughI remember writing these terrible poems when I was, like, nine and discovered alliteration. Votes: 0
Karen RussellHaving my poems set to music by Eric Moe has completely knocked my socks off. Votes: 0
Matthea HarveyI got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems. Votes: 0
Jim HarrisonDon't write love poems when you're in love. Write them when you're not in love. Votes: 0
Richard HugoI don't write poetry for the New Yorker. My poems appear in the Nation, mostly. Votes: 0
Kevin SessumsThe poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning. Votes: 0
Nikki GiovanniI have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Votes: 0
Seamus HeaneyThe dark night was the first book of poetry and the constellations were the poems. Votes: 0
Chet RaymoI had always written. I had written stories and poems. Then I started writing plays. Votes: 0
Lena DunhamWe have always made mistakes, but the greatest mistakes are the poems we have written. Votes: 0
Tristan TzaraI think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have. Votes: 0
Sylvia PlathI never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals. Votes: 0
Philip LarkinCreations, whether they are children, poems, or organizations, take on a life of their own. Votes: 0
StarhawkThe few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest. Votes: 0
Wilhelm ReichI'm very clever at hiding poems perhaps more clever than I am at writing them. Votes: 0
Charles BukowskiI write almost everything, actually. Songs, poems, stories. And stories out of every genre, too. Votes: 0
Jackie EvanchoKeetje Kuipers' poems are daring, formally beautiful and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas. Votes: 0
Tracy K. SmithThe first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems. Votes: 0
Stanley KunitzAll pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them. Votes: 0
John FowlesI like having a phrase lying around to get poems started. It's like having a key. Votes: 0
Shane McCraeI'm always doing poems from a place of not-knowing, a place of ignorance in a way. Votes: 0
Alison Hawthorne DemingI have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, thatâs all. Votes: 0
Anna KamienskaI believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work. Votes: 0
Joy HarjoThe language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends. Votes: 0
Robert BlyFor all their compliments do verses pay? They mayn't, yet these same poems make me gay Votes: 0
Marcus AureliusWhen I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature. Votes: 0
Lisel MuellerAn odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream. Votes: 0
A. S. ByattThe great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body. Votes: 0
David WhyteLike all art, poems are only hints and guesses that draw our attention to something larger. Votes: 0
Luci ShawI'm much more capable of cutting back than of expanding. I've gotten very surgical about poems. Votes: 0
Joan LarkinPeople are born with the knack to write poems and songs. I'm not a poet at all. Votes: 0
Petra HadenI like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places. Votes: 0
John AshberyThe poems are part of my attempt to understand being in the world in an honest way. Votes: 0
Dan Beachy-QuickI seek to be moved, my imagination reborn.Let me feast on poems that feed my hunger. Votes: 0
Susie ClevengerI'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings. Votes: 0
Honore de BalzacI prefer always to think that I am creating a book, not a series of stand-alone poems. Votes: 0
Martha RonkFor a poet, making poems is a way of viewing the world, being in the world, breathing. Votes: 0
Robin MorganIf you read Keats's poems, they're often full of doubts and anxieties. They can be quite tough. Votes: 0
Jane CampionMy first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint. Votes: 0
Helen DunmoreOn that other novels followed: but I still wrote fairy tales and dreamy poems of another world." Votes: 0
Laurence HousmanA painter can turn pennies into gold, for all subjects are capable of being transformed into poems. Votes: 0
Jean-Auguste-Dominique IngresI first came across 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' in college, with other anthologized poems by Yeats. Votes: 0
Billy CollinsPlace is extremely important to my work because I am always pulling landscape imagery into my poems. Votes: 0
Cate MarvinI would like a simple life / yet all night I am laying / poems away in a long box. Votes: 0
Anne SextonI didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind. Votes: 0
Edward HirschThe reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet. Votes: 0
Yehuda AmichaiI can't imagine having the courage to ask a publisher to do a whole book of my poems. Votes: 0
Frederick BuschI consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made. Votes: 0
James BroughtonWell, yes: people write poems when they are in love, but a wise man will not print them. Votes: 0
Hans Christian AndersenI keep all my poems in my journals and lock them away. They are the start of everything. Votes: 0
Stevie NicksModern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. Votes: 0
W. S. MerwinSome good, some so-so, and lots plain bad: that's how a book of poems is made, my Friend. Votes: 0
MartialA novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories. Votes: 0
Walker PercyI see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems. Votes: 0
Donald HallYes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions. Votes: 0
Anne StevensonIn truth, I'm still slightly embarrassed to say, I am a poet. I'd rather say, I make poems. Votes: 0
Henri ColeThe best public poems aren't necessarily those that go at the subject like a bull at a gate. Votes: 0
Andrew MotionThe language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere. Votes: 0
Paul CelanThe Hollywood movies are more like novels, and the kinds of films I make are more like poems. Votes: 0
Stan BrakhageI don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Votes: 0
Robert Penn WarrenSome poems are like the Centaurs--a mingling of man and beast, and begotten of Ixion on a cloud. Votes: 0
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowWhen you read my poems or quotes remember you're stepping into the mind that steps outside of me Votes: 0
Stanley Victor PaskavichIn my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said. Votes: 0
Mary KarrMy favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets. Votes: 0
Rita DoveThrough the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder Votes: 0
Bob DylanI think of my best poems as vessels that I can or hope to fill with everything I have. Votes: 0
Alex LemonI didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them. Votes: 0
Maxine KuminYou may repeat the most marvelous poems. And that is not worth a cent if you don't live it. Votes: 0
Jiddu KrishnamurtiAs a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes. Votes: 0
Ian Hamilton FinlayI'm all over my poems, even if their relation to my everyday life is that of dream to reality. Votes: 0
Matthea HarveyToday we should make poems including iron and steel And the poet should know how to lead an attack. Votes: 0
Ho Chi MinhI would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. Votes: 0
Virginia WoolfI sit in my tree I sing like the birds My beak is my pen My songs are my poems. Votes: 0
David AlmondI write a book of poems and then the characters won't go away so I write a play from that. Votes: 0
Grace CavalieriI learned to play guitar at a young age and converted poems and stuff that I had written to songs. Votes: 0
Gregory HarrisonFor my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything. Votes: 0
Langston HughesThe poems are all wrong. It's a bang, a really big bang. Not a whimper. And sometimes gold can stay. Votes: 0
Kami GarciaYou don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble Votes: 0
Charles OlsonYou'll be a poorer person all your life if you don't know some of the great stories and great poems. Votes: 0
Walt DisneyHow are his poems?""He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way. Votes: 0
Charles BukowskiThe one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words. Votes: 0
Sylvia PlathIt is not enough for poems to be fine; they must charm, and draw the mind of the listener at will. Votes: 0
HoraceI had a dream, in 1985, I believe, when a friend I'd gone to school with was sick - one of the first people I knew who'd gotten the AIDS virus. I had a dream of him in his bedroom with an angel crashing through the ceiling. I wrote a poem called 'Angels in America.' I've never looked at the poem since the day I wrote it. Votes: 1 Tony Kushner
I wrote a staggeringly bad poem when I was 19 after a girlfriend dumped me. I seem to remember comparing her to a tarantula. It was all very E. J. Thribb of me. Votes: 1 Simon Schama
I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why. Votes: 1 Diane Wakoski
He oft finds med'cine, who his griefe imparts; But double griefs afflict concealing harts, As raging flames who striveth to supresse. Votes: 3 Edmund Spenser
The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body. Votes: 4 David Whyte
And Robert Lowell, of course - in his poems, we're not located in his actual life. We're located more in the externals, in the journalistic facts of his life. Votes: 2 Mark Strand
I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems. Votes: 1 Robert Morgan
More or Less Love Poems #11: No babe We'd never Swing together but the syncopation would be something wild Votes: 4 Diane di Prima
Heartbreak was the impetus to me writing poems and music in the first place. Votes: 3 Jill Scott
I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why. Votes: 4 Diane Wakoski