The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.
Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.
But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Love is like a friendship caught on fire.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
or simply: