The poem springs from the half spoken words of the patient. . . . When asked, how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing.
The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.
The mind is the great poem of winter, the man, Who, to find what will suffice, Destroys romantic tenements Of rose and ice.
In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.
The poem is a confession of faith.
Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.
I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem.
The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.
A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.
If a chap can't compose an epic poem while he's weaving tapestry, he had better shut up, he'll never do any good at all.
Poetry’s medium is the individual chest and throat and mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.
If indeed it's a race Then the chicks do the most It isn't a brag Or an estrogen boast It's the women who've led me With big open hearts If not for their love I'd have failed at the start. And it's not just the mothers I speak of them ALL It's a woman there first When somebody falls. The multi of tasking That's easy to tease I dare a great man To try it all, PLEASE! So this is my shout out My rallying cry To women all over I hold you up high And though there are others Who'll think this poem strange It's the women who plant The root of big change.
As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.
One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it. A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer.
You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.
I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I wanted to be a poem.
The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.
if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem.
Now no one will listen to songs. The prophesied days have begun. Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its wonder, Don't break my heart, don't ring out.