Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.
If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about.
The style is the man. Rather say the style is the way the man takes himself; and to be at all charming or even bearable, the way is almost rigidly prescribed. If it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness. No other way will do.
For, dear me, why abandon a belief, Merely because it ceases to be true, Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt, It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Yes, of course [this age] is materialistic, but the only way to counteract it is to create spiritual things. Don't worry yourself about the materialism too much. Create and stir other people to create!
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." - W. H. Auden
"A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness...It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.