To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth:but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth. Poetic art cheats truth to further and finer degrees than art of any other kind bec…

If what you write is true, it will not be so because of what you are as a writer but because of what you are as a being. There can be no literary equivalent to…

Forgive me, giver, if I destroy the gift. It is so nearly what would please me I cannot but perfect it.

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfatho…

Her poetry is the diary or autobiography - though few diaries or autobiographies compare with it for intentional and, especially, unintentional truth - of an a…

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems fantastic an…