My friend Akshay Upadhyay and I used to write poetry and read out to each other.

I am absolutely convinced that my life was redeemed by poetry.

Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.

I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.

I have been writing poetry for a long time now. I started writing in my school days.

Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry - a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its way into language - and walking seems to bring a different sort of alertness, an associative kind of thinking, a drifting state of mind.

On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.

Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.

In the poetry of immigrants, nostalgia is as common as confetti at parades or platitudes at political conventions.

For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men.

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

My favorite subject probably was math. I love math. Figures just intrigue me. I was really good at math. English probably was my worst subject. But I used to write a lot of poetry. I used to write poetry all the time.

I know when I go to a poetry reading, I feel purged, exulted. You let the poet guide you through some kind of journey.

I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.

When I get depressed, I try to get something for the terrible sadness that comes over me and create something in terms of poetry.

I went through a phase of reading lots of Urdu poetry, thanks to the great transliterated versions that have become available.

When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.

The poet is a specialist in something which everyone practises. Herein, poetry differs from the other arts. Everyone does not practise music or painting or even dancing, but everyone without exception puts together words poetically every day of his life.

I gave my voice to poetry.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.