1. 0 “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

2. 1 “Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry” Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880

3. 2 “A poet… is continually… filling some other body” John Keats 1795-1821

4. 3 “Poetry is the only art people haven’t yet learned to consume like soup” W.H. Auden 1907-1973

5. 4 “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood” T.S.Eliot 1888-1965

6. 5 “while poetry is concerned with universal truths, history treats of particular facts” Aristotle 384-322BC

7. 6 “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat” Robert Frost 1874-1963

8. 7 “Poets are the policemen of the language, they are always arresting those old reprobates the words” W.B. Yeats 1865-1939

9. 8 “Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking” John Wain 1925-1994

10. 9 “Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment” Carl Sandburg 1878-1967