“Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.”

“I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.”

“Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.”

“I never deny poems when they come; whatever I am doing, whatever I am writing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem.”

“Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.”

“Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.”

“Polyphonic prose is a kind of free verse, except that it is still freer. Polyphonic makes full use of cadence, rime, alliteration, assonance.”

“To understand Vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader.”

“Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease.”

“God made me a business woman, and I made myself a poet.”

—Amy Lowell