I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.

Poetry should help not only to refine the language of the time but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

When it comes to atoms language can be used only as in poetry. The poet too is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas nerved and blooded with emotions all held together by the delicate tough skin of words.

Speech is human nature itself with none of the artificiality of written language.

French is a foreign language but I've been speaking it since I was 18 so it's second nature to me.

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.