A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Salman Rushdie

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
Rene Char

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
Wallace Stevens

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

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar Wilde

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. Forster

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert Frost