I suppose what I really like is to set up a system which looks wonderfully secure when you first encounter it on the page, but within the framework there are crazy things which tip the reader off-balance. - Bill Manhire

A large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland - Edward Hirsch

His poems are made from his life with his life; his poems are earned. He dares to be simple. And he is surely among the finest young poets alive. - The American Poetry Review

I try to honor my reader's patience and generosity by presenting what I have to say as clearly and succinctly as possible. - Ted Kooser

Poetry is a way of living...a human activity like baking bread or playing basketball. - Robert Hass

C. K. Williams is a wonderful poet, in the authentic American tradition of Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams, who tells us on every page what it means to be alive in our time. - Stanley Kunitz

A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders - Seamus Heaney

In my poetry I give primacy to the breath. For me it is the way the poem breathes that gives it form. - Penelope Shuttle

People do seem to need poetry; it makes our ordinary life feel richer. - Elaine Feinstein

We were testing the range of the human voice - 'The Shout', Simon Armitage

...in a good poem the poet disappears. That's what the struggle with language is all about. The point is that in the finished poem you don't lay yourself bare. You create a strongbox of words. - Vicki Feaver

She is wise without portentousness, her technique faultless and her imagination fiery, political and fresh - Carol Rumens, The Independent.