American Poet Quotes & Sayings

The first thing that strikes you about Timothy Murphys verse is the palpable texture of his line - that sound of sense practised by that other American poet-farmer, Robert Frost. And just as Murphys ear is trained on the rhythms of local speech and classical epigram, his eye holds fast on the image. This is an undeluded vision, sometimes bleak, often funny, and never less than painstakingly crafted. — Michael Donaghy

I began writing for kids because I wanted to effect a change in American society. I continue in that spirit. By the time we reach adulthood, we are closed and set in our attitudes. The chances of a poet reaching us are very slim. But I can open a child's imagination, develop his appetite for poetry, and more importantly, show him that poetry is a natural part of everyday life. We all need someone to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. That's the poet's job. — Arnold Adoff

Jewel moved 432,000 hardcover copies of A Night Without Armor, thereby making her the best-selling American poet of the past fifty years. — Chuck Klosterman

These are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet:
'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!'
'Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E. Cummings, but I think I'm gonna pass.'
'You Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get a life, nerd. You're a virgin.'
'Hey bro, you need to go outside and get some fresh air into you. Or a girlfriend.'
I need to get a girlfriend into me? I think that shows a fundamental lack of comprehension about how babies are made. — John Green

Some honor Cummings as the granddaddy of all American innovators in poetry and ascribe to him a diverse progeny that includes virtually any poet who considers the page a field and allows silence to be part of poetry's expressiveness. — Billy Collins

Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam. — Christian Wiman

From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not. — Diane Wakoski

How much living have you done?
From it the patterns that you weave
Are imaged:
Your own life is your totem pole,
Your yard of cloth,
Your living.

How much loving have you done?
How full and free your giving?
For living is but loving
And loving only giving. — Georgia Douglas Johnson

When I was young and knew Virginia Woolf slightly, I learned something that startled me - that a person may be ultrasensitive and not warm. She was intensely curious and plied one with questions, teasing, charming questions that made the young person glow at being even for a moment the object of her attention. But I did feel at times as though I were "a specimen American young poet" to be absorbed and filed away in the novelist's store of vicarious experience. Then one had also the daring sense that anything could be said, the sense of freedom that was surely one of the keys to the Bloomsbury ethos, a shared secret amusement at human folly or pretensions. She was immensely kind to have seen me for at least one tea, as she did for some years whenever I was in England, but in all that time I never felt warmth, and this was startling. — May Sarton

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality. — Mark Strand

The most important American love poet in living memory, and certainly one of the most important American poets tout court, Robert Creeley was born in 1926 and raised in eastern Massachusetts. — Susan Stewart

YOU SAY "POET" LIKE THAT MEANS SOMETHING. — Amy King

Through this tradition of face-to-face oral communication, now in danger of disappearing, black folks maintained the conviction of their own worth and saved their own souls by refusing to fall victim to fear or the hatred of their oppressors, which they recognized would have been more destructive to themselves than to their enemies. As the poet Lucille Clifton put it, "Ultimately if you fill yourself with venom you will be poisoned."3 There were incidents of individual violence, usually crimes of passion committed by someone under the influence of alcohol and over a man or a woman. But despite the unimaginable cruelty that they suffered, blacks kept their sense of humor and created the art form of the blues as a way to work through and transcend the harshness of their lives. Living under the American equivalent of Nazism, they developed an oasis of civility in the spiritual desert of "me-firstism" that characterized the rest of the country. — Grace Lee Boggs

For me the poem and the poetry open mic isn't about competition and it never will be. Honestly? It's wrong. The open mic is about 1 poet, one fellow human being up on a stage or behind a podium sharing their work regardless of what form or style they bring to it. In other words? The guy with the low slam score is more than likely a far better poet-writer than the guy who actually won. But who are you? I ? Or really anyone else to judge them? The Poetry Slam has become an overgrown, over used monopoly on American literature and poetry and is now over utilized by the academic & public school establishments. And over the years has sadly become the "McDonalds Of Poetry". We can only hope that the same old stale atmosphere of it all eventually becomes or evolves into something new that translates to and from the written page and that gives new poets with different styles & authentic voices a chance to share their work too. — R.M. Engelhardt

An English poet writes, I think, just for people who are interested in poetry. An American poet writes, and feels that everyone ought to appreciate this. Then he has a deep sense of grievance ... — Stephen Spender

I believe that the American poet ought to be a tough son of a bitch. He sought to hold his own in this culture on his own terms and not compromise under any circumstances. — James Dickey

Remember that only when past genius is transmitted into a present power shall we meet the first truly american poet. And somewhere, born to the streets rather than the athenaeum, we will come upon the first true reader. The spirit of the american is suspected to be timid, imitative, tame
the scholar decent, indolent, complaisant. The mind of our country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. Without action, the scholar is not yet man. Ideas must work through the bones and arms of good men or they are no better than dreams. — Matthew Pearl

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. — W. H. Auden

John Lane has long been recognized as one of the South's finest poets and memoirists. This debut establishes him as one of our finest novelists as well. His poet's eye for detail seamlessly merges with a born storyteller's gift for narrative. Fate Moreland's Widow gives voice to those who endured one of the most painful and neglected chapters in American history. — Ron Rash

Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her. Unless it can be proven to me -to me as I am now, today, with my heart and my beard, and my putrefaction- that in the infinitue run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child names Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art. To quote an old poet:
The moral sense in mortals is the duty
We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty. — Vladimir Nabokov

In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person. — Edward Hirsch

YOUR WORDS ARE MADE OF THE AIR I BREATHE. — Amy King

Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student. — William, Saroyan

Poet' had always sounded like a profession to me, or a talent. But the dead American [Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry] made it sound like a faith. — Ariel Gore

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost. — Anne Stevenson

Amy King is a true bard. — Tomaz Salamun

Where there is a monster, the wise American poet Ogden Nash told us, there is a miracle. — Neil Gaiman

Andrea Gibson is a truly American poet, or rather, she represents the America I want to live in. Her work lights a candle to lead us where we need to go. — Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet. — Diane Wakoski

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre.Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with his suicide attempt in the previous year), tuberculosis, heart disease, brain congestion and other agents. Source: Wikipedia — Edgar Allan Poe

To say that a poet is justified in employing a disintegrating form in order to express a feeling of disintegration, is merely a sophistical justification for bad poetry, akin to the Whitmanian notion that one must write loose and sprawling poetry to "express" the loose and sprawling American continent. In fact, all feeling, if one gives oneself (that is, one's form) up to it, is a way of disintegration; poetic form is by definition a means to arrest the disintegration and order the feeling; and in so far as any poetry tends toward the formless, it fails to be expressive of anything. — Yvor Winters

He was a romantic, a poet, a lover, a friend, and a freak. Someone to be turned on by and disgusted with in the same breath. He filled her with emotion. Whether it was the sensation of an orgasm or the comfort of someone who listen to her, this experience indulged all her pleasurable senses with little to no conflict. It was heaven, it was ecstasy, but it wasn't real. — Norian F. Love

Now, you might think that because there are more poets than ever, there might be more opportunities for poets than ever. And you'd be correct. If your fondest wish is to become the next totally obscure minor poet on the block, well, you're probably already successful at that. This literary landscape has proven itself infinitely capable of absorbing countless interchangeable artists, all doing roughly the same thing in relative anonymity: just happily plucking away until death at the grindstone, making no great cultural headway, bouncing poems off their friends and an audience of about 40 people. A totally fine little life for an artist, to be sure. No grand expectations from the world to sit up and listen. One can live out one's days quite satisfied to create something enjoyed by a genial cult. But that's not why any of us are here tonight. We're here to conquer American Poetry and suck it dry of all glory and juice. — Jim Behrle

I prefer poems that occupy an imaginative sphere. When I lived in Cincinnati, I was occasionally referred to as an "Ohio Poet;" this made me uneasy, not only because I think of myself as a generally American poet but also because I like to think I write out of the country of my own mind. — Cate Marvin

A great poet must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent desert, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an enemy upon the leaves that strew the forest, the touch of a blind man feeling the face of a darling child. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Pound was silly, bumptious, extravagantly generous, annoying, exhibitionistic; Eliot was sensible, cautious, retiring, soothing, shy. Though Pound wrote some brilliant passages, on the whole he was a failure as a poet (sometimes even in his own estimation); Eliot went from success to success and is still quoted
and misquoted
by thousands of people who have never read him. Both men were expatriates by choice, but Eliot renounced his American citizenship and did his best to become assimilated with his fellow British subjects, while Pound always remained an American in exile. — T.S. Mathews

Cynie Cory roams the outer reaches of the heart's territory, from the snowy winter of family life to the tropical jungles of love. She wears her heart on her sleeve and it is as big as the country she writes about. Is she the quintessential American girl? You bet she is, part Annie Oakley, part Emily Dickinson - sharpshooting poet of wild nights. She zooms in on the detritus of love - the broken fragments, the fallen leaves - and puts together a collage that is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful. Watch out - she's driving down your street. — Barbara Hamby

Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger. — Michael N. Castle

I'm using my degree. You know, I studied English and American literature in college, and now I'm an American poet. — Eileen Myles

I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat; — Walt Whitman

We're all shaped to some degree by our own biographies and cultures and it's easy to believe that what's happened before determines what has to come next. The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson thought otherwise. "What lies behind us," he wrote, "and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Finding your Element is about discovering what lies within you and, in doing so, transforming what lies before you. "Risk — Ken Robinson

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

He was a cowboy with the soul of a poet. To this day, he is the most American American I've ever met. — Seth Grahame-Smith

So Lightning says to Mud,
"What would happen if I struck your blood?"
And Mud says, "Brother,
It would hurt,
And make me the mother
Of every living thing.
But, Fire Boy, you ain't lifting my grass skirt
Until you burn me a ring. — Sherman Alexie

One Oxford poet confessed to me that I had been scary because I talked American and wore tennis shoes. — Donald Hall

Most of these American poets pushing and hustling their talents playing at greatness. poet (?): that word needs re- defining. when I hear that word I get a rising in the gut as if I were about to puke. let them have the stage so long as I need not be in the audience. — Charles Bukowski

As the American poet, Marianne Moore, said: There is a great deal of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness. — William Strunk Jr.

I never thought of myself as a New York poet or as an American poet. — Kenneth Koch

Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life. One of my all-time favourite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, 'There is no lavender word for lynch'. — Wole Soyinka

Paradoxically, our imperial global Anglo-American language is dull with the glitter of its own decay. In response, the new meta- physical poet might consider the following cleansing strategies: keep faith with the canonical writers of the past, study Homeric Greek, excavate etymologies, embrace threatened languages, practice the fine art of translation, listen regularly to the musical flow of the breath and the beat of the heart, switch off the television, become a votary of silence.
Here lies the beginning of freedom. — Peter Abbs

Willard Gibbs is the type of the imagination at work in the world. His story is that of an opening up which has had its effect on our lives and our thinking; and, it seems to me, it is the emblem of the naked imagination - which is called abstract and impractical, but whose discoveries can be used by anyone who is interested, in whatever 'field' - an imagination which for me, more than that of any other figure in American thought, any poet, or political, or religious figure, stands for imagination at its essential points. — Muriel Rukeyser

The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors ... . The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor ... . How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor. — Walt Whitman

I've never bought a Dylan record. A singing poet? It just bores me to tears. I've got to tell you, if I had 10 Dylans in the final of 'American Idol,' we would not be getting 30 million viewers a week. I don't believe the Bob Dylans of this world would make 'American Idol 'a better show. — Simon Cowell

As Maya Angelou, American author, poet, and self-described Renaissance Woman, wrote, Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. — L.R. Knost