“Poems have ideas. The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images.”

“Poems, to me, do not come from ideas, they come from a series of images that you tuck away in the back of your brain. Little photographic snapshots. Then you get the major vision of the poem, which is like a giant magnet to which all these disparate little impressions fly and adhere, and there is the poem!”

“Poems are not often simply emotions butOne has enough emotions -- they're experienceExperience themselves are not important....”

“Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.”

“Literary' feelings are responses to poems, not just states of emotion which occur in their presence.”

“It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain.”