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" I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it. "

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" One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. "

" Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. "

" Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.' "

Mahmoud Darwish

" In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets. "

James Broughton

" All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry. "

Gustave Flaubert

" Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about. "

Wislawa Szymborska

" Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip-hop is storytelling and poetry as well. "

" I went through a phase of reading lots of Urdu poetry, thanks to the great transliterated versions that have become available. "

" When I applied for grad school, I did not specify genre. I said I wanted an MFA in Creative Writing. I was so cute and stupid! The admissions committee at Pitt decided to put me in poetry. "

" Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry. "

Wislawa Szymborska

" The next big push in my life is trying to get poetry popular again. "

" Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have. "

" Now, to read poetry at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all the world besides. "

William Ernest Henley

" I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats. "

J. Courtney Sullivan

" The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. "

Gilbert K. Chesterton

" A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be. "

" That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people. "

" Poetry is a domestic art, most itself when most at home. "

" Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action. "

Juan Felipe Herrera

" Fresh or changing conditions ferment fresh forms. "

" I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper. "

" I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry. "

" Life has to have the plenitude of art. "

" I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs. "

" When I get depressed, I try to get something for the terrible sadness that comes over me and create something in terms of poetry. "

" A person who's only suffering can't write a poem. There are choices to be made, and you need to be objective. "

" The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly. "

Frederick William Robertson

" So the best way to understand poetry, which is made by men, is to imitate, and that goes back to making work as a kind of doorway into new work, as opposed to making work as a mirror of the old work. "

" In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry. "

" Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life. "