quotations about poetry
What does it mean to be a great poet? It means that you wrote one or two great poems. Or great parts of poems. That's all it means. Don't try to picture the waste or it will alarm you.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
The hard part for me is to find the poem--a poem that matters. To find what the poem knows that's special. I may think of writing about the same thing that everyone does, but I really like to write a poem that hasn't been written. And I don't mean its shape. I want to experience or discover ways of feeling that are fresh. I love it when I have perceived something fresh about being human and being happy.
JACK GILBERT
The Paris Review, fall/winter 2005
Almost as essential to poetry, and equally as regards poetry of the loftiest and poetry of the lowliest kind, is lucidity, or clearness of expression. No poet of much account is ever obscure, unless the text happens to be corrupt.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus