If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children things that touch your soul.

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.

Poetry does not consist of words alone there must be sentiment and fancy combination and arrangement.

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.

Well probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different.

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.

If there were no poetry on any day in the world poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.

There are men who can write poetry and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write.

A lyric it is true is the expression of personal emotion but then so is all poetry and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry differing from each other in essence is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and yes read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there I know there will be people who will listen.

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

There is no gilding of setting sun or glamor of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers' wives.

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature especially in lyric poetry.

That is what I did with Jack and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.