Poetry Quotes of the Day

“The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it, by way of the poem itself, all the way over to the reader.”—Charles Olson

“A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.”—Jean Cocteau

“Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.”—Sigmund Freud

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”—Percy Shelley

“You arrive at truth through poetry; I arrive at poetry through truth.”—Joubert

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”—T.S. Eliot

“I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.”—Robert Frost

“The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.”—James Fenton

“No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster.”—C. Day Lewis