Again like Williams, with the emphasis now regrettable, when a man makes a poem, makes it mind you, he takes the words as he finds them lying interrelated about him.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.
Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.
I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.
I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Poetry lies its way to the truth.
What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.
Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.
Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.
I am increasingly attracted to restricting possibility in the poem by inflicting a form upon yourself. Once you impose some formal pattern on yourself, then the poem is pushing back. I think good poems are often the result of that kind of wrestling with the form.
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.