“A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.”

National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; that constitute his ideal audience and his better self. To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men. And he speaks not in private grunts and mutterings but in the public language of the dictionary, of literary tradition, and of the street. Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the products something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.

Die Ros ist ohn warum; sie blühet weil sie blühet, Sie acht nicht ihrer selbst, fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet.
Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Sämtliche Poetische Werke (1949), Vol. I

Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), p. 32
Context: The poetic image is not a static thing. It lives in time, as does the poem. Unless it is the first image of the poem, it has already been prepared for by other images; and it prepares us for further images and rhythms to come. Even if it is the first image of the poem, the establishment of the rhythm prepares us — musically — for the music of the image. And if its first word begins the poem, it has the role of putting into motion all the course of images and music of the entire work, with nothing to refer to, except perhaps a title.

Source: Arcadia

Phases in English Poetry (1928)

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 68, The Golden Bough.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 222.

Source: Dorian