“The person who wrote the poem can tell you more about the poem than anyone else.”

— David Yezzi

Interview with Ernest Hibert (2006)

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David Yezzi 3

American poet 1966

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“There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem's sake.”

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“Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
When you know that my poems are not poems,
Then we can speak of poetry.”

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Variant translation:
Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
After you know my poems are not poems,
Then we can begin to discuss poetry!
"Zen Poetics of Ryokan" in Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry (Summer 2006) http://www.hermitary.com/articles/ryokan_poetics.html
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“You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.”

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Source: The Anthologist

“I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It's a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages.”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

Personism: A Manifesto, from The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1972).

“The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

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“…a poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Woman at the Washington Zoo," [an essay about the writing of the poem by that name] from Understanding Poetry, third edition, ed. Cleanth Brooks (1960) [p. 319]
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“It naturally follows that the creature you love next best is the person — the God-lover or God-hater (almost never, apparently, anything in between), the saint or profligate, moralist or complete immoralist — who can write a poem that is a poem.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

“It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Is It Possible to Write a Poem?,” p. 111
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”

“I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.”

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Source: The Later Poems, 1837-1864: Volumes I and II

“Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“The person who wrote the poem can tell you more about the poem than anyone else.”

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