The poetic character lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low,
rich or poor, mean or elevated -- it has as much delight in conceiv-
ing an Iago as an Imogen. . . . Poetry must work out its own sal-
vation in a man; it cannot be matured by laws and precepts, but
by sensations and watchfulness. . . . Poetry should strike the reader
as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a
remembrance. -- JOHN KEATS

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can
warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top
of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the
only ways I know it. Is there any other way? -- EMILY DICKINSON

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is
to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can
tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal
wound -- that he will never get over it. That is to say, permanence
in poetry as in love is perceived instantly. It hasn't to await the
test of time. -- ROBERT FROST

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. -- CARL SANDBURG

Poetry is not greatly concerned with what a man thinks, but with
what is so embedded in his nature that it never occurs to him to
question it; not a matter of which idea he holds, but of the depth
at which he holds it. -- EZRA POUND

Poetry is not the assertion that something is true, but the making
of that truth more fully real to us. -- T. S. ELIOT

The poet, with the adjustment of a phrase, with the contrast of an
image, with the rhythm of a line, has fixed a focus which all the
talk and all the staring of the world has been unable to fix before
him. His is a labor which is at all times necessary, for without it
that sense of human reality which is the poet's greatest accom-
plishment is lost. -- ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

The charm of poetry is its unpredictability. Its element is surprise:
the surprise of finding something strange in the familiar, some-
thing familiar in the strange. . . . The power of poetry is the
ability to express the inexpressible -- and to express it in terms of
the unforgettable. -- MICHAEL LEWIS

There is a light upon them (the poets), especially upon the Eliza-
bethans and Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley. . . . Those
are the people with whom I want to live, those are the men I feel
are our brothers. -- KATHERINE MANSFIELD

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