The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
The scientist and engineers who are building the future need the poets to make sense of it.
I truly believe that as a novelist, you cannot adequately describe the weather in England - the light, the dampness, the bitterness, the summer softness, and so on - without having experienced it.
All a poet can do today is warn.
I believe the poet shouldn't be in the poem at all except as a lens or as ears.
The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness.
The poet is like the earth's shadow. The sun moves, and the poet writes something down.
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.