
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot. —
W. H. Auden

Auden is a poet - no, the poet - of unembarrassed intellect. Ideas are his emotions, emotions are his ideas. —
Cynthia Ozick

I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy? —
W. H. Auden

As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. —
W. H. Auden

no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it. —
W. H. Auden

In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough. —
Stephen Greenblatt

The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born. —
W. H. Auden

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere. —
W. H. Auden

What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves. —
W. H. Auden

You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated. —
W. H. Auden

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs. —
W. H. Auden