... but we want to be the poets of our life—first of all in the smallest, most everyday matters.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Always be a poet, even in prose.
There are two classes of poets — the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
The poet consecrates himself to and consumes himself in the task of defining and constructing a language within the language.
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.
I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
