
The Poetic Principle (1850)
"Anonymity: An Enquiry"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
The Poetic Principle (1850)
“The person who wrote the poem can tell you more about the poem than anyone else.”
Interview with Ernest Hibert (2006)
“It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.”
“A poem releases itself, it does it with cadence.”
Paris Review Interview (1998)
The Paris Review interview
Context: Poems get to the point where they are stronger than you are. They come up from some other depth and they find a place on the page. You can never find that depth again, that same kind of authority and voice. I might feel I would like to change something about them, but they’re still stronger than I am and I cannot.
“The true poem rests between the words.”
"Servants to Thought"
Shades of the World (1985)
A River Runs Through It (1976)
Context: Everything that was to happen had happened and everything that was to be seen had gone. It was now one of those moments when nothing remains but an opening in the sky and a story — and maybe something of a poem. Anyway, as you possibly remember, there are these lines in front of the story:
“Poetry is a subset of a Cosmos, which in itself, is a poem.”
The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)