“When a poet is being a poet — that is, when he is writing or thinking about writing — he cannot be concerned with anything but the making of a poem.”

—  Richard Wilbur

National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: When a poet is being a poet — that is, when he is writing or thinking about writing — he cannot be concerned with anything but the making of a poem. If the poem is to turn out well, the poet cannot have thought of whether it will be saleable, or of what its effect on the world should be; he cannot think of whether it will bring him honor, or advance a cause, or comfort someone in sorrow. All such considerations, whether silly or generous, would be merely intrusive; for, psychologically speaking, the end of writing is the poem itself.

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Richard Wilbur24
American poet 1921–2017

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