Poet Laureate Quotes

“We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried”
― Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry

“Poets sing our human music for us.”
― Carol Ann Duffy

“One of poetry’s great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music and image — things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why — is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective.

"Staying Human: Poetry in the Age of Technology”
― Tracy K. Smith

“By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“In all my years studying craft, reading books on writers by writers, standard genre tomes, Writing for the Soul of the World, is not just helpful with an incredible overview of craft, of thoughtful approaches to the writing life, and this idea of the "Universal Grammar of Story," but it is the most beautifully-designed, thoughtfully laid- out book on writing I have ever witnessed that includes an overall design based on many brilliant classical texts, long adored, used, and quoted for their brilliance, now the plot points of which are directly applied.”
― Mona Lisa Saloy, Poet Laureate of Louisiana