A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you come and sit relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.

France is not poetic she even feels in fact a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

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 is the work of poets not of peoples or communities artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.