He Listens

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
-Jean Cocteau

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
-Robert Frost

Poetry, like the moon, does not advertise anything.
-William Blissett

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
-Jean Cocteau

The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past.
-Robert Frost