10 Great Quotes About Poets, Poetry, and Writing by Paul Muldoon

“The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.”

“If the poem has no obvious destination, there’s a chance that we’ll be all setting off on an interesting ride.”

“What I try to do is to go into a poem – and one writes them, of course, poem by poem – to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it’s going to end up.”

“That’s one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one’s little turn – that you’re just part of the great crop, as it were.”

“For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry.”

“There’s very little of the intentional about the business of writing poetry, as least as far as I can see.”

“Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini.”

“I believe that these devices like repetition and rhyme are not artificial, that they’re not imposed, somehow, on the language.”

“We simply have not kept in touch with poetry.”

“Living at that pitch, on that edge, is something which many poets engage in to some extent.”

–Paul Muldoon