
“To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”
Paris From My Window (1944)
We prefer “freedom”, we want to be as free as we can, but freedom and responsibility can go together. We’re responsible because we’re writers, and we’ve been at this all our lives…
On the poet having both responsibility and freedom in “Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” https://gulfstreamlitmag.com/archives/online-archives/current-issue-4/features/interview-with-juan-felipe-herrera/ (Gulf Stream, 2015)
“To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”
Paris From My Window (1944)
“The poet should be responsible to the poem.”
The Poet's Poetic Responsibility (2012)
“But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth!”
Source: The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011), Ch. 2
Context: I see I have shocked you all a little. But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth! No matter what the cost to my personal safety [... ] in matters of men and this world. I’m a poet, not a complete fool…
Laura Riding and Harry Kemp from The Left Heresy in Literature and Life (London: Methuen, 1939)
“Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.”
On starting off in poetry (as quoted in the book “Race and the Modern Artist” https://books.google.com/books?id=4XY8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208&dq)
Source: http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/65-aug.htm Bob Dylan Interview
Source: The Victorian Age in Literature (1913), On Algernon Charles Swinburne Ch. III: The Great Victorian Poets (p. 95)
“I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word.”
Bob Dylan Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/65-aug.htm by Nora Ephron & Susan Edmiston (1965)