I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.
But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.
Maybe lurking in my unconscious was the idea that when someone's collected poems are published it means that the poet is dead. I found myself looking at my work as if I were at my own funeral.
How do you define a poet? It's very simple. Anyone declaring that he is a poet, is a poet.
Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.
The only refuge left to us was the poet's ivory tower, which we climbed, ever higher, to isolate ourselves from the mob.
I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.
Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.
Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits; they do not come to coo.
Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones.
[He] had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers.
Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets.
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
For nothing keeps a poet In his high singing mood Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable food.
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.
If the poet would avoid pepsis in his patients, his scalpel must be as clean as the surgeon's.
When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life.
It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.
We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
I think the obligation of a poet is not to be in an ivory tower; it is not to be isolated but to be among people.