Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary the only home.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

And if they haven't got poetry in them there's nothing you can do that will produce it.

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether the trick they miss is that being called this thing with the weight of tradition behind it and with the association of the Royal family does allow you to have conversations and to open doors and wallets for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.

In the language of poetry where every word is weighed nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all not a single existence not anyone's existence in this world.

I have nothing to say I am saying it and that is poetry.

Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness vigor and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry.