“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.” Suggesting humorously that excessive conversation can dissipate the energy that might otherwise become writing · Remark quoted in Vogue, 15 March 1963 Communication Humour Writing
“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” Presenting poetry as an intense and direct engagement with experience rather than an escape from it · Interview, The Art of Poetry No. 2, 1960 Experience Life Poetry
“We're like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made the father such a man.” Reflecting on the paradox that prosperity can remove the difficulties through which character was formed · Television interview, Meet the Press, 22 March 1959 Character Society Struggle
“You've been broadened and enlarged to where you can listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” Defining education partly as the confidence and self-command required to hear challenging ideas · Commencement address, Dartmouth College, 1955 Character Education Understanding
“I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.” Presenting composition as an act of exploration rather than the execution of a predetermined plan · Interview, New York Times, 7 November 1955 Discovery Poetry Writing
“People will tell you that freedom lies in being cautious. Freedom lies in being bold.” Linking genuine freedom with the courage to act rather than excessive caution · Television interview with Bela Kornitzer, 1952 Character Courage Freedom
“For my part I should be as satisfied to play tennis with the net down as to write verse with no verse form set to stay me.” Arguing that formal constraints give poetry resistance against which artistic skill can work · Letter to Lesley Frost, 1934 Poetry Skill Style
“Poetry is a fresh look and a fresh listen.” Reducing poetic perception to renewed attention to both the visible world and the sounds of life · Letter to John Freeman, 5 November 1925 Language Poetry Wonder
“The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound.” Describing the lasting mark a powerful poem can leave upon a receptive reader · Essay, The Poetry of Amy Lowell, 1925 Emotion Poetry Reading
“There are a lot of good things I believe in, but for the life of me I can't always enumerate them at a moment's notice.” A characteristically wry admission that deeply held convictions need not form a tidy creed · Letter to Alfred Harcourt, 1917 Belief Humour Mind
“What we feel as creation is only selection and grouping.” Presenting artistic creation as the imaginative rearrangement of materials already available to us · Letter to Sidney Cox, December 1914 Art Imagination Writing
“The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.” Emphasising the importance of hearing rhythm, intonation and living speech in both writing and reading · Letter to John T. Bartlett, 22 February 1914 Language Reading Writing
“Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.” Defining poetry through metaphor, implication and meanings that extend beyond literal statement · Lecture, Education by Poetry, 1930 Language Metaphor Poetry
“Every poem is a new metaphor inside or it is nothing.” Expressing Frost's belief that genuine poetry depends upon fresh acts of imaginative connection · Essay, The Constant Symbol, 1946 Metaphor Originality Poetry
“It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love.” Describing poetry as a journey from pleasure and impulse towards discovery and understanding · Essay, The Figure a Poem Makes, 1939 Poetry Wisdom Writing
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” Using a sporting image to stress the value of formal constraint in poetry · Conversation / lecture remark, as commonly attributed Art Poetry
“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.” Emphasising the poem’s inner momentum and self-sustaining form · Essay, The Figure a Poem Makes Art Poetry
“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” Describing poetry as a movement from spontaneous pleasure towards fuller understanding · Essay, The Figure a Poem Makes Beauty Poetry Truth
