Poetry is perfect verbs hunting for elusive nouns. -J. Patrick Lewis
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. -Edgar Allen Poe
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content. -Alfred de Musset
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. -Gustave Flaubert
The poet doesn't invent. He listens. -Jean Cocteau
Before men ever wrote in clay they cast their words in verse and line, rythymbound in poets' minds, defying time and age. -Dave Beard
In my view a good poem is one in which the form of the verse and the joining of its parts seems light as a shallow river flowing over its sandy bed. -Basho
A poem should not mean But be. -Archibald MacLeish
Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people. -Adrian Mitchell
Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. -Augustus William
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. -Robert Frost
To have great poets there must be great audiences too. -Walt Whitman