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.
“When the house is burning down around the poet's head, on grounds of what if any dispensation can the poet continue the poem?”
"The Deserters: The Contemporary Defeat of Fiction" (1972)
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Carl Oglesby 4
American political activist 1935–2011Related quotes
“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”
“Poets”, pp. 212–213
Poetry and the Age (1953)
“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.”
“The poet should be responsible to the poem.”
The Poet's Poetic Responsibility (2012)
“All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.”
“…whether they write poems or don’t write poems, poets are best.”
“Recent Poetry”, p. 227
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time
“Fifty Years of American Poetry”, pp. 327–328
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)