“Whoever comes first with such poetry, I shall make a pedestal of all my books for him and lie beneath his feet myself, so that he may stand higher.”

Original: Kto pierwszy z taką poezyą przyjdzie, ja mu z wszystkich książek moich postument zrobię, i sam się położę pod nogami, aby stał wyżej i prawdę zawsze oglądał z wysoka. — He values poetry that serves truth so highly that personal literary fame becomes secondary. · Letter to his mother, February 1845 (Polish)

• Humility
• Poetry
• Truth

“Pray to the Most High God day and night for poetry for living people.”

Original: Proś Boga najwyższego w dzień i w nocy o poezyę dla żywych ludzi. — Poetry is imagined as something spiritually useful to living people rather than merely an ornament. · Letter to his mother, February 1845 (Polish)

• Inspiration
• Poetry
• Purpose

“A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn't.”

On the craft and difficulty of poetry · Letter to a high school newspaper, October 26, 1955

• Effort
• Expression
• Poetry

“I wrote the whole damn thing with a change. I was thinking of terza rima, but gave up rime—the very vague imitation of Dante.”

Reflecting on the creative process behind The Yachts · Note to Henry W. Wells, 27 July 1955

• Influence
• Poetry
• Process

“The poet is the happiest of men.”

Celebrating the unique fulfillment found in poetic creation · Interview, Speaking Straight Ahead

• Happiness
• Poetry
• Vocation

“If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.”

Poetry should arise from joy rather than obligation · Conversation / anecdote (commonly attributed)

• Joy
• Pleasure
• Poetry

“Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matters like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.”

Contrasting the freight of prose with the efficient engine of poetry · Prose statement

• Economy
• Poetry
• Prose

“A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words.”

Poetry as a precise, functional construction rather than ornament · Essay, Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams

• Craft
• Poetry
• Structure

“No ideas but in things.”

A core tenet of Williams's imagist poetics · Poem, Paterson

• Ideas
• Poetry
• Reality

“The great poetry is always written by men who are capable of feeling intensely.”

Connecting poetic power with the depth and intensity of emotional experience. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Emotion
• Passion
• Poetry

“A man cannot say, I will compose poetry. The most poetical mind is one which is naturally adapted to the expression of its own conceptions.”

Emphasising that poetry arises from imaginative temperament rather than deliberate manufacture. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Creativity
• Poetry
• Writing

“A poet comprehends the words which express the relation of things, and these words are the elements of his art.”

Treating language and the relationships between things as the fundamental materials of poetry. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Art
• Language
• Poetry

“The parts of the poet's creation are themselves the elements of another creation.”

Suggesting that great imaginative works continue to generate new possibilities in those who encounter them. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Creation
• Imagination
• Poetry

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

Suggesting that poetry can transform imperfect or troubling reality through artistic perception. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Art
• Beauty
• Poetry

“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”

Portraying poetic creation as an act of singing through solitude rather than seeking an audience. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Expression
• Poetry
• Solitude

“The language of poets is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension.”

Describing metaphor as a means of discovering relationships that ordinary language overlooks. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Language
• Metaphor
• Poetry

“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”

A vivid metaphor for poetry as a force that resists being contained or subordinated to a purpose. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Freedom
• Poetry
• Power

“In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry.”

Connecting the origins of language, society and poetry through the creative power of expression. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Language
• Poetry
• Society

“To be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation between existence and perception, and between perception and expression.”

Defining poetic perception as an encounter with truth, beauty and the relations between things. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Beauty
• Poetry
• Truth

“The most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.”

Reflecting on the inevitable gap between an artist's inspiration and its expression. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Creativity
• Expression
• Poetry

“Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world.”

Presenting poetry as a means of preserving beauty against disappearance and time. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Beauty
• Immortality
• Poetry

“A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not.”

Expressing Shelley's expansive conception of poetic imagination beyond ordinary limits. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Eternity
• Imagination
• Poetry

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.”

Portraying poets as vessels for insights whose significance may only become clear later. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Future
• Inspiration
• Poetry

“They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit.”

A striking account of the poet's ability to explore the full range of human experience. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Humanity
• Poetry
• Understanding