third poetry

The first poetry is always written by sailors and farmers who sing with the wind in their teeth. The second poetry is written by scholars and students, wine drinkers who have learned to know a good thing. The third poetry is sometimes never written; but when it is, it is written by those who have brought nature and art into one thing.

—Walter Anderson (1903-1965), American painter, writer and naturalist.

song and charge

Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made...

—W.B. Yeats, "Under Ben Bulben"

bar talk

It appears from many rejections that I do not write poetry at all. Or as a dear friend told me the other day: "You do not understand the true meaning of poetry. You are not lyrical. You do not sing! You write bar talk. The type of thing you write I can hear in a bar on any day."

—Charles Bukowski, in a letter to Jon Webb, one of his early publishers.

What is a poet?

What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd around the poet and say to him, "Sing for us soon again"—which is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music, is delightful.

—Søren Kierkegaard, "Either/Or"