To the poet fated to be a poet, self-expression is as natural and as involuntary as breathing is to us ordinary mortals.

Beyond myself, somewhere,
I wait for my arrival.

To be a great painter means to be a great poet: someone who transcends the limits of his language.

The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.

For the Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians, nature was a living totality, a creative being. For this reason, art, according to Aristotle, is imitation; the poet imitates the creative gesture of nature.

Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude - his monologue is a universal chorus.