Rhymes you as fast as a sailor will swear -Babette Deutsch.
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo -Don Marquis, The Sun Dial, 1878.
The intervals are the tough things -Robert Frost The simile is taken from a prose poem entitled As You Say (not without sadness), Poets Don’t See They Feel It contains another simile which sheds light on the poet as one who strips away insulation: “He pulls at the seams like a boy whose trousers are cutting him in half.”
Poets … are conductors of the senses of men, as teachers and preachers are the insulators -Karl Shapiro.
Poetry … is like spray blown by some wind from a heaving sea, or like sparks blown from a smouldering fire: a cry which the violence of circumstances wrings from some poor fellow -George Santayana.
Poetry is like painting one piece takes your fancy if you stand close to it, another if you keep at some distance -Horace.
The poet is like the prince of the clouds who rides the tempest … exiled on the ground, amidst boos and insults, his giant’s wings prevent his walking -Charles Baudelaire.
Poems are like people … there are not many authentic ones around -Robert Graves.
Like marijuana smoke are poet’s verses -Jaroslav Seifert.
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting -Robert Frost.
Like science, poetry must fix its thought in thing and symbol -Dilys Laing.
A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification -E.
He approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid.
Explaining how you write poetry … it’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife -Phillip Larkin.
Composed poetry … like a dancer working at the barre, continually exercising the power of imagining, like a muscle that demanded flexing and stretching -Arthur A.
All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure -Joseph Joubert.