Robert Frost Poet Quotations

Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.

I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

Poetry is the renewal of words, setting them free, and that's what a poet is doing: loosening the words.

Let's get my incantation right: "I wish I may, I wish I might" Give earth another satellite.

When clever people ask me where I get a poem, I despair.

Before now poetry has taken notice Of wars, and what are wars but politics Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?

I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.

Summary riposte To the dreary wail There's no knowing what Love is all about. Poets know a lot.

Poets like Shakespeare know more about poetry than any $25 an hour man.

A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." - W. H. Auden "A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness...It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

Freedom is slavery some poets tell us. Enslave yourself to the right leader's truth, Christ's or Karl Marx', and it will set you free.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. . . . Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.

No wonder poets sometimes have to seem/ So much more business-like than business men./ Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

I had a lovers quarrel with the world.