Quote

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 the mother-tongue of the human race.

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.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

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 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.

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.