“If we leave that general descriptive talk where everything which looks like a poem can be called a poem and turn instead to normative talk, we will of course not recognize as a poem everything that looks like a poem. A real poem has to be a successful poem, a successful speech act. In approximately the same way that only a mathematical proof which really proves something can be called a mathematical proof. It is not enough that it looks like a proof. The proof has to prove. For the poem it is not enough to look like a poem. It has to achieve something.”

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings. ”

“For what is the point ofhaving something lovely if you never share it?It would be like having a poem, a beautiful wild poem that noone else has, and burning it.”

“This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.”

“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.”

“no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.”