40 Quotes by Peter Davison

Very often, what I find newest is something very old. It's just a little jingle, a little rhythm, a little turn, a little trope.

People who deliver their work in poetry slams have a lot of vitality, and they are more dramatic than the institutional/academic poets.

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.

They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it.

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.

However, in 1950 there might have been 150 books of poetry published in a year. In 1997, there are probably about 1,500.

The trouble with the performance poets is that they don't seem to have read anything. So there is not a real sense of the poetic tradition in their work.

And I watch my friends, most of whom are in academic life because most poets have to be in academic life, there aren't so many other ways to survive.

And one of the odd things about it is that poetry is now fleeing from the academies to another institution, which is the performance poetry.