Pastoral Resources

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

Whilst in Prussia poets only speak of the love of country as one of the dearest of all human affections, here there is no man who does not feel, and describe with rapture, how much he loves his country.

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

Living at that pitch, on that edge, is something which many poets engage in to some extent.

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets.

And thus it was that I started to wonder why Robert Burns is so important to us. We have other poets, and other writers, and other heroes, yet we do not afford them the veneration that we afford to Robert Burns.

San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.

Let the poets cry themselves to sleep, and all their tearful words will turn back into steam.

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.