10 Great Quotes About Poets, Poetry, and Writing by E.E. Cummings

“Well, write poetry, for God’s sake, it’s the only thing that matters.”

“Why should I be able to be a capital “I”? I’m just a cynical old poet, no one cares for what I have to say in society, they just enjoy my work.”

“It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagra Falls) that “my poems” are competing. They are also competing with each other, with elephants, and with El Greco.”

“A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.”

“My advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.”

“Poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.”

“At least my theory of technique [for writing poetry], if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. ‘Would you hit a woman with a child? — No, I’d hit her with a brick.’ Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.”

“When I write I try to be as original as possible, in order to distinguish myself from all the other writers who make their fortunes off of simple rhymes.”

“If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making. Like all obsessions, the Making obsession has disadvantages; for instance, my only interest in making money would be to make it. Fortunately, however, I should prefer to make almost anything else including locomotives and roses.”

“Ineluctable preoccupation with The Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage: whereas nonmakers must content themselves with the merely undeniable fact that two times two is four, he rejoices in a purely irresistible truth (to be found, in abbreviated costume, upon the title page of the present volume [Is Five]).”

—E. E. Cummings