Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end. - W H Auden The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair. - Jose Bergamin I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so. - Jorge Luis Borges On his last voyage he had seemed on the brink of success and had stood in the prow reciting a grand poem of his own composition to a dim blue promontory in which he recognized one of the capes of Greenland. But it is idle to deny that the general feeling was dampened somehow, when they discovered it was the Cape of Good Hope. In short, the admiral was one of those who keep ...

In this quiet place on a quiet street where no one ever finds us gently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain. --from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street - Aberjhani Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take. - A R Ammons 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 For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling vaguely guilty. - William S Burroughs It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world. - Gilbert K Ch...

There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime. - Alexandre Dumas The reader's challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions. - John Barton ...and for the first time in my life I understand the end of that poem. And I never wanted to. You have to believe me. - Stephen Chbosky When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good an...