Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art
Phases in English Poetry (1928)
Obituary in The Guardian http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2099883,00.html <br class="br">About
Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art
Phases in English Poetry (1928)
“Such were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung,
Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.”
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet
"Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer" preface to Thomas Parnell's Poems on Several Occasions (1721).
Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters
Foreword
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: A poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience.
Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt is true. Even while he is writing about the little portion of reality which is part of his experience, the poet may be conscious of a different reality outside. His problem is to relate the small truth to the sense of a wider, perhaps theoretically known, truth outside his experience.
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
Aaron Hill (writer) (1685–1750) British writer
Advice to the Poets (1731), p. 32
Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer
Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch. III The Poet: How to Party
Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian
Kālidāsa: His Art and Culture by Ram Gopal (1984)
Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet
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.