Peter Davison quotes:

And there are a lot more people reading poetry, but there are not so many people reading an individual poet.

It is very difficult for people to come in contact with their own emotions and their own sensibilities.

For instance, it's a little better now than it was two or three years ago, but something like 70% of the poems I receive seem to be written in the present indicative.

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.

But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.

Frost is the most sophisticated of poets.

I just think that some version of the past in our culture is going to rise up and become dominant.

The more poetry you have in the head, the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all.

The reason one writes poems is so that your poem will be remembered.

The problem, for me, with the writing programs is that they produce a terrible uniformity of product.

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.

But there is some way in which poets believe that and this is dangerous, too believe that their calling gives them a certain freedom. A certain freedom to live in a free way.

If poets were realistic, they wouldn't be poets.

Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

People are talking about the Internet as though it is going to change the world. It's not going to change the world. It's not going to change the way we think, and it's not going to change the way we feel.