Robert Pinsky Mean Quotations

The test of whether it's poetry is: does it sound beautiful when you say the words over, in your mind or your voice, with no skilled performer, no music, just the sounds and meanings in the words themselves,

An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar.

Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them or justify them.