Poems Quotes

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life. - Unknown

You know, I used to say, when people say, 'How do you think about what to write about in the poems every week?' And I say, 'Well, I have to turn it in on Monday, so on Sunday nights I turn the shower to iambic pentameter and it sort of works out that way.' - Calvin Trillin

You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble. - Charles Olson

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions. - Anne Stevenson

Why does one always ask a writer why they stopped? I am sure everyone finds in any drawer a few dear poems. - Peter Bichsel

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. - Virginia Woolf

When I was 18 years old I had to go in the Army-it was World War II-and I didn't write very much at first, but when I was actually in combat in the Philippines I managed to write a few poems. It was reassuring to be able to write poems while I was in this terrible war. - Kenneth Koch

What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it has managed to exclude. - Harold Bloom