The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.

Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying.

When you are describing A shape, or sound, or tint; Don't state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things With a sort of mental squint.

Only the poet who writes speaks his message across the millennia to other hearts. Only in writing can the cry from the great cross on Golgotha still be heard in the minds of men.

Most Americans do not like poetry. We may respect it, but we do not enjoy it.

To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.