A Quote by Louise Bogan

It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

Louise Bogan

Quote Topics

Age Ancient Any Begins Death Elements First Himself Human Human Life Humanity Illness Language Life Moment Must Nearly Old Old Age Poet Possible Protect Source Speak Subjects Tragic Very Writing

Quote Author

Louise Bogan
American - Poet
August 11, 1897 - February 4, 1970

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

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

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

[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.

Adrienne Rich

I haven't seen any poet in this country behave nearly as rudely as Newt Gingrich or Bill O'Reilly. I'm not asking these people to approve of everyone's manners. I don't feel obliged to defend the manners of every poet who submits a poem to my web site. That's not my job. My job is to provide them with an opportunity to speak from the heart. If there's not much in the heart and if the mouth is running wild, that's not my problem.

Sam Hamill

The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects.

Lafcadio Hearn

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

More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any other poet must he wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of himself.

John Burroughs

Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings... if the poet serves the understanding by way of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the nobler sense.

Leonardo da Vinci

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

Henry David Thoreau

There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.

Erica Jong

The Vedas give information on various subjects. They have come together and form one book. And in later times, when other subjects were separated from religion - when astronomy and astrology were taken out of religion - these subjects, being connected with the Vedas and being ancient, were considered very holy.

Swami Vivekananda

How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'