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

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

Whereas with poetry no one has to show anybody really, and you don't have to tell anyone you're doing it.

For while the subjects of poetry are few and recurrent, the moods of man are infinitely various and unstable. It is the same in all arts.

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

The poetry community here has been extraordinarily welcoming.

I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed, and two others I'm working on.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

At this point we've answered about every question you could possibly imagine about Deep Space Nine, so we do this thing called Theatrical Jazz, where we do a show of bits and pieces of things from plays and literature, poetry... stuff that we like. It's fun.

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.

For me, prose walks, poetry dances.