Gissa smile Sun, giss yr best / good mawnin' one, fresh 'n cool like - 'Sun O (2)', Hone Tuwhare

The simple lack / Of her is more to me / Than others' presence. Edward Thomas, 'The Unknown'

God is the perfect poet.

I would have words as tenacious as mules/ to bear us, sure-footed/ up the mountain of night... from 'Elemental' by Edward Baugh

This marvellous book has exceeded my expectations...it displays admirable craftsmanship, a subtle, musical ear and immense variety. John Mole on the Collected Poems of Sylvia Townsend Warner, South West Review

All her poems have written underneath - 'I have seen it.' - Randall Jarrell

The blood jet is poetry,/ There is no stopping it. - 'Kindness', Sylvia Plath (written 1st February 1963)

Billy Collins writes lovely poems...limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides. - John Updike

...the communication of the dead/is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. - from Part 1 of 'Little Gidding', T. S. Eliot

With a lyric poem, you look, and meditate, and put the rock back. With fiction you poke things with a stick to see what will happen. - Margaret Atwood