Someone told me just recently that poets are eulogists. It's their job, to eulogize. I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Because in almost every poem of mine there is a loss.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think that's what poets try to do: They try to sidestep neurology and go straight to meaning.
Poets are like the decathletes of literature.
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.
The scientist and engineers who are building the future need the poets to make sense of it.
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.
The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.
Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words.
The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.