In the language of poetry where every word is weighed nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all not a single existence not anyone's existence in this world.

Unfortunately poetry is not born in noise in crowds or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.

Everyone needs solitude especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.

I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point life itself takes over again.

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

Poetry is a form of mathematics a highly rigorous relationship with words.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.

For me poetry is a situation - a state of being a way of facing life and facing history.

What other people may find in poetry or art museums I find in the flight of a good drive.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry on the other hand poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

As civilization advances poetry almost necessarily declines.

I really enjoy English and poetry and writing classes.

Rap is poetry to music like beatniks without beards and bongos.

Traditional matter must be glorified since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things the listeners we must remember needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

That is to say epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar so the invention itself has been.

If epic poetry is a definite species the sagas do not fall within it.

By the general process of epic poetry I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that for a minute the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is you need to talk with children to teachers and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.