JULES DEELDER

That's what poems are for: to combine banality and heaven. But whether that makes sense or not? Art doesn't have to serve a useful purpose, does it? Or to have ordinary benefit? No.


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HENDRIK WILLEMYNS (3)

Sometimes I have the feeling that poetry more causes damage than that it helps. Probably it's all part of the game.


Poetry by those who extol God's existence (for example William Blake) is more beautiful than poetry by the ones who deny Him. That's a pity. We should have more Physical poets.


Poetry is like colour. Poetry is in everything.


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ALLEN GINSBERG

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





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THÉOPHILE GAUTIER (7)

And I, I have created 'Émaux et Camées'.



Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a material that resists the process, verse, marble, onyx, or enamel.



The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn't exist.



You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.



Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.



What I write is not for little girls.



I was born to travel and write verse.



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W.H. AUDEN

Poetry makes nothing happen.





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RICHARD EBERHART

The writing of 'The Groundhog' is an example of a theory I have that poetry is a gift of the gods. It cannot be had only by taking thought. The process is ultimately mysterious, involving a total trust of the whole being, some kind of magical power. When a poem is ready to be born it will be born whole, without the need to change a word, or perhaps with the need to change only a word or two. I thus go back to an ancient theory of inspiration.





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WILLIAM BLAKE

I have written this Poem from immediate Dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without Premeditation & even against my Will; the Time it has taken in writing was thus render'd Non Existent, & an immense Poem exists which seems to be the Labour of a Long Life, all produc'd without Labour or Study.





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