Peter Davison

Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

Poetry was invented as an mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers.

Poetry is composing for the breath.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.