Poetic Excellence Quotes

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.

The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.

Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

Frost isn't exactly despised but not enough people have worked out what a brilliant poet he was.

Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.

I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is the richest in the world.

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

All poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves, -when a light, a freedom, a power came to them which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other times.

Not gods, nor men, nor even booksellers have put up with poets' being second-rate.

I do believe that we've a responsibility to try to acknowledge the range, both geographic and graphic, of what's happening in poetry in English. I'm interested in poems that are first-rate. After that, I'm not too concerned if they come from Queens or Queensland.

Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.

Sappho and Emily Dickinson are the only woman geniuses in poetic history.

If you are a man of learning, read something classic, a history of the human struggle and don't settle for mediocre verse.

At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer or Shakspeare. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd

I'm very proud of the fact that I'm one of Britain's biggest selling poets. That gives me a huge amount of pleasure.

Maybe there are three or four really good poets in a generation.

When I first became brave enough to tell people that I wrote poems, so many people would rave to me about Edna St. Vincent Millay's work. I was embarrassed not to have read her, and I think that put me off from reading her for a long time. So many of her poems are just impeccable.

My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he offers advice.

When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare.

A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.