Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is not to lie but to imagine what you want to follow the direction of the poem.

Poetry should be able to reach everybody and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

Even if you only want to write science fiction you should also read mysteries poetry mainstream literature history biography philosophy and science.

From my music training I knew that some Spanish rhythms apart 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound.

I know I'm not a wordsmith. And I don't write poetry. Sometimes I think I should because it's really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels.

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether the trick they miss is that being called this thing with the weight of tradition behind it and with the association of the Royal family does allow you to have conversations and to open doors and wallets for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.

While also importantly not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone but everyone should have the choice.

Written poetry is worth reading once and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.

A theology should be like poetry which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations the same hopes and fears to which the Bible addresses itself it might rival it in distribution.

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.

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

From what the moderns want we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did what poetry must be.

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive a thing which enters into one's soul and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.