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Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.

Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.

I would come to understand there is no poem separable from its source. I began to see that poems are not just an individual florescence. They are also a vast root system growing down into ideas and understandings. Almost unbidden, they tap into the history and evolution of art and language.

Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other; it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.