
“Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?”
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?”
Source: Dear Life: Stories
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”
Poetry Quotes
“If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
“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.”
Squares and Oblongs, in Poets at Work (1948), p. 170
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.”