Every dude in your high school wasn't striving to be the best poet because then he'd get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.
As a schoolboy, poetry seemed defined by preciousness. It was all very rarefied.
To be a poet, it's a challenge to do it in poverty, to do it in wealth. To do it in the academy, to do it in a relationship where you're happy. Everything changes the game. To do it in the awkward state of love, despair, dying. You just have to work it.
If poets were realistic, they wouldn't be poets.
Nearly all men and women are poetical, to some extent, but very few can be called poets. There are great poets, small poets, and men and women who make verses. But all are not poets, nor even good versifiers. Poetasters are plentiful, but real poets are rare. Education can not make a poet, though it may polish and develop one.
To be a poet is as serious, long-term and natural as the effort to be the best human you can be. To express something well is not a question of having a top-class education and understanding poetic forms: rather, it's a question of paying attention.
Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.
Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.
Maybe there are three or four really good poets in a generation.
No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.