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Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity, and that's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry is waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come.

In every culture, in every language, there is expressive play, expressive word play; there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.

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

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

Poetry is composing for the breath.

Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.

At school, I was never given a sense that poetry was something flowery or light. It's a complex and controlled way of using language. Rhythms and the music of it are very important. But the difficulty is that poetry makes some kind of claim of honesty.