Quotes

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A poem is a naked person... some people say that I am a poet.
You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.
Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.

The Waves
The poet is individual�he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not.

Leaves of Grass
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.

The Dyer's Hand
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

The Complete Works of W.H. Auden
All great poets become naturally, fatally, critics
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me
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