To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.
It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self.
Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.
Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.
I wouldn't be very happy if a poet read what I had written and said, 'What a peculiar thing to say about this work of mine.'
Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
The poet is primarily a spokesman, making statements or incantations on behalf of himself or others - usually for both, for it is difficult to speak for oneself without speaking for others or to speak for others without speaking for oneself.