Best Poet Quotes

• If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

  David Carradine

  Inspirational, Life, Being Yourself

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Poetry: the best words in the best order.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Writing, Vocabulary, Prose Poetry

  Table Talk 12 July 1827 (1835)

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• Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Life, Poetry, World

  A Defence of Poetry (written 1821) See Auden 22; Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Twain 104

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• Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Poetry, Ashes

  "My favourite word in songwriting history is 'that'" by Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2007.

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• 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.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Clever, Prose And Poetry, Prose Poetry

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.84

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• 

  Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

  Robert Frost

  Inspirational, Motivational, Happiness

  "The Road Not Taken" l. 16 (1916)

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• Carpe diem. (Seize the day.)

  Horace

  Movie, Wise, Latin

  Horace, Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz (2008). “The Odes of Horace”, p.27, JHU Press

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• It's difficult to put your own bare ass out on the limb every time you sit down to write a poem. But that's really sort of the ideal. Because if we don't discover something about ourselves and our world in the making of a poem, chances are it's not going to be a very good poem. So what I'm saying is that a lot of our best poets could be better poets if they wrote less and risked more in what they do.

  Sam Hamill

  Writing, Our World, Chance

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• We've always had a tradition in America of hounding our artists to death. Look at the list of our great artists, you see a continual history of defeat, frustration, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction. The best poets of my generation are all suicides.

  James Dickey

  Suicide, Artist, Frustration

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• God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Faith, Song, Real

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1871). “Poetical Works”, p.101

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• I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

  David Knopfler

  Feelings, Magic, Exhilaration

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• The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mountain, West, Sides

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2088, Delphi Classics

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• Every dude in your high school wasn't striving to be the best poet because then he'd get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.

  Chad Harbach

  Girl, School, Striving To Be The Best

  "Fielding Questions on The Art of Fielding". Interview with Joshua Lars Weill, www.gq.com. September 2, 2011.

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• The best poet is the man who delivers our daily bread: the local baker.

  Pablo Neruda

  Food, Men, Cooking

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• The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have else they will never have better.

  Harriet Monroe

  People, Hearing, Poet

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• Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event.

  Terrance Hayes

  Beautiful, Book, Compassion

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• Janice Gould is one of our best poets. The music of her poetry will delight you, and her gentle courageous accounts of tribal, family, and personal history make this book unforgettable. Doubters and Dreamers is a master-piece.

  Leslie Marmon Silko

  Book, Dreamer, Pieces

  10 Copy quote