Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.