10 Humorous Quotes About the Poet’s Life

In trying times, we need some humor to get through the day. As poets, it’s incredibly easy to constantly see the glass as half-empty and dwell on the darker aspects of life. While many incredible poems have been written about dark topics or on dark dispositions, it’s impossible to live with your head in that space every day.

If you’re a poet, you’ll know that the poet’s life isn’t all bad. Plus, having a good sense of humor and laughing some things off can be one of the best ways to deal with rejection letters rolling in, cranky editors (that might just be the editor voice in the back of your mind), and people joking that “poet” isn't a real job title.

Every poet goes through similar trials. The following quotes get into the grim, humorous, and motivational nooks and crannies of what it really is like to be a poet. Like anything in life, being able to laugh sometimes always helps.

“Poets are never unemployed, just unpaid.”

― Kathy Skaggs

It’s a humorous quote, but it’s probably one that every poet can get behind. Even if you aren’t paid for your work, or you aren’t paid much, poetry is still very much an occupation of your thoughts and your time.

On top of that amount of commonality, it’s quite true… we poets often don’t get paid nearly enough. Poet may be a profession, but unless you’re one of those rare New York Times bestselling poets, it’s probably not going to be a profitable one.

Regardless, money isn’t why the majority of us write poetry. It’s because we want to express ourselves.

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of the first creative writing courses I ever took (all the way back in middle school, thanks homeschooling) taught me a lot of good basics. Sadly, I only remember one; the author of the textbook comically begged young writers to only use an exclamation point once a year. I suspect he was referencing Mr. Fitzgerald.

“Poets cut corners so often it’s a wonder poetry isn’t written on round paper.”

― Sam Hooker

It may be a little salty, I prefer to think that we take creative liberties rather than cut corners, but it’s still a funny thought. I feel like this thought might be shared by quite a lot of fiction writers to see poetry as short, simple, and easy in comparison to a novel. I write both fiction and poetry, so I see the challenges in both, but there are people out there who think writing poetry is a walk in the park.

Does anyone have a rounded notebook for their poetry? We can prove this one wrong so fast.

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”

― Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde had this one right; is there anything worse than a typo? Especially if it’s a typo that you aren’t responsible for?

Poetry is such a fragile media. Since there are so few words in a single poem, you don’t have a lot of space to save yourself if there is an error hiding somewhere. It just takes one now being written as not and the entire meaning of your poem has been permanently changed. Poetry is very, very weak against typos and misprints.

“The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact:”

— William Shakespeare

This quote appears in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The older language and word choice make it a bit trickier to follow, but the notion here is quite humorous, in a dark way.

Essentially, good old Willy is pointing out how lunatics, lovers, and poets are all quite imaginative people. Poets often end up lost in imagination by the very nature of what we do, but we aren’t the only sorts out there who do. There’s quite a strong flavor of self-deprecating humor here, considering it’s Shakespeare who wrote this.

"Therefore is a word the poet must not know."

— Andre Gide

I got a chuckle out of this one; many of us have an inclination to be wordy or overly leading. Others have the proclivity to be too cryptic. While it's possible to use words like therefore artfully, I usually find myself editing them out.

“Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we’re not poets.”

― Dudley Moore

That cliché that all poets are depressed souls who only write about what’s broken in the world or in themselves lends to the drinker poet stereotype. Even though there are dozens of motivational poets out there, we’re still often looked at as a morose bunch.

Regardless, I got such a good laugh out of this quote, because it’s true. How many people do you think there are out there staring at the bottom of a glass because they don’t have a beautiful written media to express their innermost thoughts and feelings? Being a poet really isn’t all bad.

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

― G.K. Chesterton

In poetry, we tend to focus on beautiful imagery. If not beautiful, then lurid—after all, we want to make an impact with our words. Yet for the most part, whether you’re going for stirring beauty or shaking horror, there’s probably not any cheese in either of those approaches.

Have you ever even read a poem that mentioned cheese? I finished an entire BA in literature, and I can’t think of even one. It’s a bit funny to think about how we tend to ignore some of the very ordinary things or foods that we see in daily life.

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time; unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”

– Robert Cormier

This one may not be poet specific, but I enjoyed the humor of this one. Plus, while I've accepted that my fiction needs to have about three more drafts than I'd like it to, I've been slower to accept the importance of revision with my poetry. This one's going in here for all my fellow reluctant editors.

“Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.”

― J.D. Salinger

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this. But when I was a kid suffering through middle school English classes, I used to make fun of the classic poets who were really in love with using a lot of natural imagery and personification in their poems. Now I am completely one of those poets who take the weather very personally. I just wrote a poem a few days ago where I personified rain to explain my narrator’s feelings of abandonment.

This is quite fun because it pokes fun at some of the poetic devices that are staples of good poetry. When you think about it, we tend to take ourselves very seriously. We don’t laugh about our craft nearly enough. We end up debating over imagery and symbolism, both important literary devices, but perhaps a little too fervently. After all, even if the blue curtains are symbolic of sadness, it doesn’t hurt to take ourselves a little less seriously.