“Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?”
Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist
Source: Dear Life: Stories
Andrew R. MacAndrew (trans.) A Precocious Autobiography (1963; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) p. 7.
“Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?”
Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist
Source: Dear Life: Stories
Subramanya Bharathi (1882–1921) Tamil poet
English translation originally from "Subramaniya Bharathi" at Tamilnation.org, also quoted in "Colliding worlds of tradition and revolution" in The Hindu (13 December 2009) http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/colliding-worlds-of-tradition-and-revolution/article662079.ece
“The priority for the poet must be his poetry, the poetry must determine his agenda and deadlines”
Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic
Poetry Quotes
“If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 65
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet
Squares and Oblongs, in Poets at Work (1948), p. 170
Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet
On poets having certain freedoms in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)
“I believe that only poetry counts… A great novelist is first of all a great poet.”
Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author