A Quote by Christian Morgenstern

A poet must have died as a man before he is worth anything as a poet.

Christian Morgenstern

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Anything Before Died Man Must Poet Worth

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Christian Morgenstern
German - Poet
May 6, 1871 - March 31, 1914

If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.

Donald Hall

To be a political poet means simply to be a poet, and any poet worth their salt will be a political animal in their own peculiar way - they have no choice: politics is one of the many fragments we thread into the tapestry of the poem.

Andre Naffis-Sahely

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.

W. H. Auden

One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.

W. S. Di Piero

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

Clive James

So, I've never been politically correct, even before that term was available to us, and I have really identified with other people who don't want to be read as just a black poet, or just a woman poet, or just someone who represents a cause, an anti-Vietnam war poet.

Diane Wakoski

It's very important to me to be an American poet, a Jewish poet, a poet who came of age in the 1960s.

Edward Hirsch

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

Stevie Smith

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

Alice Walker

How do you define a poet? It's very simple. Anyone declaring that he is a poet, is a poet.

Billy Cannon

I'm a political poet - let us say a 'human' poet, a poet that's concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that's what I'm going to use.

Juan Felipe Herrera

The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Henry David Thoreau

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

Yehuda Amichai

There is no moral to my song, I praise no right, I blame no wrong; I tell of things that I have seen, I show the man that I have been As simply as a poet can Who knows himself poet and man.