Every good poem begins in language awake to its own connections.
- Jane Hirshfield

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal, which the reader recognizes as his own.
- Salvatore Quasimodo

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone and not alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. 
- Dylan Thomas. 