Best poet & reader Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I think there is a great difference, in that when the poet is reading you get the whole personality of the person, especially if he's a good reader. Whereas a person just sitting gets what he puts into it.”

Ifs Thinking Persons Whole Reading Differences Poet Personality Reader Sitting

Author:James Laughlin

“I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.”

People Writing Bigs Individual Rooms Poet Reader One On One

Author:Wislawa Szymborska

“But metre itself implies a passion , i.e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.”

Mind States Passion Poet Reader Expected Excitement

Book:Imagination in Coleridge

Source: Imagination in Coleridge

“There are some good things and some fantastic ones in Auden's early attitude; if the reader calls it a muddle I shall acquiesce, with the remark that the later position might be considered a more rarefied muddle. But poets rather specialize in muddles and I have no doubt which of the muddles was better for Auden's poetry: one was fertile and usable, the other decidedly is not. Auden sometimes seems to be saying with Henry Clay, "I had rather be right than poetry"; but I am not sure, then, that he is either.”

Ifs Sometimes Seems Might Attitude Doubt Position Poet Reader Good Things Fantastic Not Sure No Doubt Clay Remarks Fertile Muddle Auden

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Few poets have made a more interesting rhetoric out of just fooling around: turning things upside down, looking at them from under the sofa, considering them (and their observer) curiously enough to make the reader protest, "That were to consider it too curiously.”

Made Enough Interesting Poet Reader Protest Rhetoric Considering Observers Upside Down Sofas Fooling Around Things Upside Down

Author:Randall Jarrell

“It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great - the major novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that they not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and readers, but that they are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.”

Way Humans Wells Art Term Awareness Possibility Poet Reader Majors Significant Novelists Really Great

Author:F. R. Leavis

“When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation. Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame.”

Thinking Should May Long Left Term Pieces Stage Poet Reader Fame Ten Critics Following Stealing Temples Pounds Orthodox Justification Long Ago Shrinks Posterity Condemnation Charlatans

Author:Laura Riding

“Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and the Prix de Rome, it is hard to remember what chances the poet took in that small-town world, how precariously hand-to-mouth his existence was. And yet in one way the old days were better; [Vachel] Lindsay after a while, by luck and skill, got far more readers than any poet could get today.”

“There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.”

Poet Reader Great Poet

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what matters is what a reader actually finds there which is usually something both more and less than the poet planned.”

May Matter Remember Poet Reader What Matters

Author:Dana Gioia

“The poet lives as long as his lines are imprinted on the minds of his readers.”

Mind Long Lines Poet Reader

Author:Alan Bold

“For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.”

Source: Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals

“The poet should try to give his poem the quiet swiftness of flame, so that the reader will feel and not think while he is reading. But the thinking will come afterwards.”

Thinking Giving Feels Should Trying Poetry Reading Poet Reader Quiet Flames Swiftness

Author:Sara Teasdale

“The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.”

Source: The collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.”

Jobs Poetry Secret Novel Mystery Taught Poet Keys Reader Mystery Novels

Book:Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed. The poet's pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader's pleasure in unlocking and revealing these secrets.”

Way Should Pleasure Secret Poet Reader Findings Revealing Ingenious Matched Unlocking

Author:Diane Wakoski

“It was not the purpose of poetry to record anything and everything, to merely describe either the outer world or some subjective mood, but to speak from the imagination of the poet to the imagination of the reader.”

World Purpose Speak Imagination Records Poet Reader Mood Subjective Outer Worlds Anything And Everything

Author:Kathleen Raine

“A poem's life and death dependeth still Not on the poet's wits, but reader's will.”

Stills Poet Reader Wit Life And Death

Author:Alexander Brome

“One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.”

Wells Doe Made Said Two Reality Language Common Written Objects Poet Perspective Reader Honor Demand Unique Significant Two Things Validity Poetry By Famous Poets Unique Perspective

Author:W. H. Auden

“In the end, time is the best ally of poets. It clarifies their works and makes them accessible to an ever widening circle of readers.”

Ends Poet Reader Circles Allies End Times

Author:Mieczyslaw Jastrun

“Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.”

Looks Dream Mines Poet Reader Curious

Author:W. H. Auden

“I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry.”

Ifs Writing Wonder Wife New York Poet Reader Smart Ideals My Wife Very Smart

Author:Kenneth Koch

“Auden, who asked two things of an imagined world-that it be somehow like ours and somehow unlike-would be Ben Marcus's ideal reader, yet even without the poet's dire program, I am altogether taken by this hilarious and sexy alternative universe. Just imagine! it is all done with words instead of mirrors, so much more reliable and so much more heartbreaking. Thus Prospero enthralls his crew.”

World Two Done Would Be Universe Taken Imagine Poet Reader Ideals Program Mirrors Sexy Alternatives Two Things Crew Heartbreaking Auden Prospero

Author:Richard Howard

“So we start with an oversignifying reader. Those texts that appear to reward this reader for this additional investment - text that we find exceptionally suggestive, apposite, or musical - are usually adjudged to be 'poetic'. ... The work of the poet is to contribute a text that will firstly invite such a reading; and secondly reward such a reading.”

Art Poetry Reading Poet Reader Investment Rewards Musical Poetic Invites

Author:Don Paterson

“Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.”

Source: The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History

“This capacity for oversignifying, for reading in, is precisely what poets tap into, both in their own practice and in the poem the give to the reader; and in doing so they turn language against its own project of conceptual division, and use it to heal itself - and in the process - paradoxically - to articulate new concepts that it can't yet accommodate.”

Giving Use Poetry Turns Reading Literature Language Process Practice Poet Reader Projects Concepts Capacity Heal Division Accommodate Heal Itself

Author:Don Paterson

“The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.”

“After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.”

World Mean Ends Wanted Poetry Creation Poet Reader Criticism Critics Everyday Determine Prose Interpreter

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.”

“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”

Thinking Kind Feelings Form Divine Poet Reader Plot

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“Hyesims poems: transformative as walking high granite mountains by moonlight, with fragrant herbs underfoot and a thermos of clear tea in the backpack. Their bedrock is thusness, their images beauty is pellucid and new, their view without limit. The shelf of essential Zen poets for American readers grows larger with this immediately indispensable collection.”

Grows Views Clear Poet Reader Walking Mountain Limits Essentials Tea Collections Shelves Indispensable Moonlight Herbs Bedrock Granite Thermos

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.”

People Book Literature Poet Reader Sells Critics Publishers Monument Biographers Rubble

Book:Trust

Source: Trust

“I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.”

Way Writing Believe May Difficult Poet Reader Don't Believe Obscure

Author:Lydia Davis

“I hope any poem I've ever written could stand on its own and not need to be a part of biography, critical theory or cultural studies. I don't want to give a poetry reading and have to provide the story behind the poem in order for it to make sense to an audience. I certainly don't want the poem to require a critical intermediary - a "spokescritic." I want my poems to be independently meaningful moments of power for a good reader. And that's the expectation I initially bring to other poets' writing.”

“You can publish a poem you think is a very important poem, and you don't hear a word from anyone. [...] You can publish a book of poetry by dropping it off a cliff and waiting to hear an echo. Quite often, you'll never hear a thing. So doing that, using older work, puts it in a context, and that sort of forces the reader to realize what its importance is-if it has any. Everything needs a context. You're not going to recognize a poet unless you have a context.”

Ifs Thinking Needs Important Book Force Waiting Realizing Poet Reader Importance Echoes Publish Cliffs Dropping

Author:Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.”

Way Writing Firsts Mean Courses Poet Reader Best Way Bores Urgent

Book:Collected writings on poetry

Source: Collected writings on poetry

“If you want to write poetry, you must have poems that deeply move you. Poems you can't live without. I think of a poem as the blood in a blood transfusion, given from the heart of the poet to the heart of the reader. Seek after poems that live inside you, poems that move through your veins.”

Ifs Thinking Want Writing Heart Moving Given Blood Poet Reader Veins Blood Transfusion

Author:Ralph Fletcher

“What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.”

Said Poet Reader Validity Poetry By Famous Poets

Author:W. H. Auden

“Speaking as an outsider is the most authentic voice for a poet. Poets who have one hundred thousand or one million readers [as many South Korean poets do] might not be a real, authentic poet.”

Real Might Voice Millions Poet Reader Thousand Hundred South Outsiders Korean

Author:Kim Hyesoon

“Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.”

Two Problem Interest Memories Trouble Poet Reader Perception Difficulty Lists Granted Minors

Author:Billy Collins

“There is all this stuff about how sensitive poets are and how in touch with feelings, etc. they are, but really all we care about is language. At least in the initial stages of the process of writing the poem, though later other things start to come in, and a really good poem usually needs something more than just an interest in the material of language to mean anything to a reader.”

Needs Writing Mean Feelings Care Language Stuff Process Interest Stage Poet Materials Reader Sensitive Etc Initials

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“I'm more than a little suspicious of humor in poems, because I think it can at times be a way of getting a reaction out of a reader, or an audience, that is something closer to relief: i.e., thank god this isn't poetry, but stand-up comedy. Some poets are really funny, but more often poets are fourth rate stand up comics at best. But they benefit from the sheer relief of the audience.”

Thinking Way Littles Audience Comedy Poet Reader Benefits Rate Reactions Relief Thank God Fourth Sheer Suspicious Stand Up Comedy

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“Joyce's writing in Dubliners contains some of the most unshowily beautiful sentences in the English language. I learned from him that if you write a good, clean line of English, you can get under a reader's skin. The reader won't even know why, but there you are. Didion, Berger, the many others I mentioned above, and many, many poets I haven't mentioned. Writers of this calibre are the moving targets the rest of us are always chasing.”

Ifs Knows Writing Beautiful Moving Language Lines Havens Poet Reader Skins Clean Sentences Target Chasing English Language Joyce

Author:Teju Cole

“There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.”

Sometimes Students Poet Reader Great Poet Distressing

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you.”

Way Firsts Has Beens Might Reading Impossible Poet Reader Guides Crafts Poetry Is Odds Great Poet

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I think in terms of educating a group of readers, MFA programs are very good. I just think the model of MFA programs in which a young poet goes through the program, publishes a series of books, gets teaching jobs, that's a bit at risk.”

Thinking Book Jobs Young Bits Term Risk Groups Teaching Poet Reader Models Program Series Very Good Publish

Author:Edward Hirsch

“The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn't exist or in here in poems alone.”

Needs Kind Ideas Poet Reader Poetry Is Need You Circuits

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader.”

Poet Reader Insight Range Negotiation

Author:Edward Hirsch

“My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader. And so, as a reader you have a task to do in finding those bottles and opening up the messages and experiencing what's in them inside of yourself.”

Jobs Focus Inspire Poet Reader Findings Messages Tasks Opening Bottles Opening Up

Author:Edward Hirsch

“As a reader I don't distinguish between confessional and non-confessional work. After all, how do we even know that certain "I" poems are confessional? It's a tricky business, this correlating of the speaker and the poet.”

Knows Certain Poet Reader Speakers Tricky

Author:Matthea Harvey

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