But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.
- Peter Davison Quote

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.
- Peter Davison Quote

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.
- Peter Davison Quote

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such.
- Peter Davison Quote

For instance, it's a little better now than it was two or three years ago, but something like 70% of the poems I receive seem to be written in the present indicative.
- Peter Davison Quote

I just think that some version of the past in our culture is going to rise up and become dominant.
- Peter Davison Quote

I like poems that are complex.
- Peter Davison Quote

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

If I were brave enough to say so, I'd like to think that I had written some poems that people are not going to forget.
- Peter Davison Quote

In my youth, I found that I was quite often inspired and pushed forward by what I read.
- Peter Davison Quote

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.
- Peter Davison Quote

It is very difficult for people to come in contact with their own emotions and their own sensibilities.
- Peter Davison Quote

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.
- Peter Davison Quote

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

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.
- Peter Davison Quote

The problem, for me, with the writing programs is that they produce a terrible uniformity of product.
- Peter Davison Quote

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.
- Peter Davison Quote

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.
- Peter Davison Quote

There are so many things that poetry is about, one of which is memory.
- Peter Davison Quote