#poets

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts. ↗

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#full #ghosts #gloom #graces #haunted

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping. ↗

— Norman MacCaig

#because #better #boring #drooping #dry

Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth. ↗

— Mohsen Makhmalbaf

#everybody #fell #god #greatest #had

Yes, you can feel very alone as a poet and you sometimes think, is it worth it? Is it worth carrying on? But because there were other poets, you became part of a scene. Even though they were very different writers, it made it easier because you were together. ↗

— Roger McGough

#became #because #carrying #different #easier

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil. ↗

— Henry Miller

#difference #doctrine #evil #example #forces

The south produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors and lawyers and poets, but certainly no engineers and mechanics. Let Yankees adopt such low callings. ↗

— Margaret Mitchell

#certainly #doctors #engineers #lawyers #low

Poets are born, not paid. ↗

— Addison Mizner

#paid #poets

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty. ↗

— Eugenio Montale

#advised #considered #dangerous #exercise #i

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#example #fiction #fiction writing #maybe #poets

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#forms #narrative #poems #poets #southern