Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Romance like a ghost escapes touching it is always where you are not not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time but it is poetry in the memory.

Art: If the object of poetry is to make men then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

I have written some songs but I would really call what I've done poetry at the end of the day because I'll sit with my guitar for hours and hours on end for like a week and then I won't touch it for a month. I also just have no confidence. And you know what? I don't have time because I'd rather be doing other things like knitting.

When you're going through something whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody you often feel like 'Oh my God I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact poetry's a nice reminder that no everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.

I was a 16-year-old girl at one point so of course I wrote poetry.

The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.

Well I still write poetry but I wouldn't call myself a poet.

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance like a signpost or a warning notice.

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is prose = words in their best order - poetry = the best words in the best order.

Dancing is the poetry of the foot.

I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.

If the object of poetry is to make men then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

I have nothing to say I am saying it and that is poetry.

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.

Well you can't teach the poetry but you can teach the craft.

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.