For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.
Tracy K. Smith
From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
Mark Strand
We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
Allen Tate
I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.
Natasha Trethewey
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
Gore Vidal
If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
Derek Walcott
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
Robert Penn Warren
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman
Sometimes you have a poem that you really want to write and it never happens.
C. K. Williams