Well, I was ten and very much afraid. In my kind world the dead were out of range And I could not forgive the sad or strange In beast or man. - Richard Wilbur

In my kind world the dead were out of range
And I could not forgive the sad or strange
In beast or man.

Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.

When a poet is being a poet — that is, when he is writing or thinking about writing — he cannot be concerned with anything but the making of a poem. If the poem is to turn out well, the poet cannot have thought of whether it will be saleable, or of what its effect on the world should be; he cannot think of whether it will bring him honor, or advance a cause, or comfort someone in sorrow. All such considerations, whether silly or generous, would be merely intrusive; for, psychologically speaking, the end of writing is the poem itself.

Hebetude. It is a graph of a theme that flings The dancer kneeling on nothing into the wings, And Nijinsky hadn't the words to make the laws For learning to loiter in air; he merely said, "I merely leap and pause."