"Don't ask me what I mean" by Clare Brown and Don Paterson (eds) (Picador, 2003)

It's a book of statements by poets about poetry. I've added the below quotes and more to my Literary Quotes page

• "the concept of poetry ... as self expression has always repelled me" (John Heath-Stubbs)
• "a poet goes so deeply inside himself to write a poem that he ceases to be himself at all" (P.J. Kavanagh)
• "The sestina strikes me as the poetic equivalent of an instrument for removing Beluga caviar from horses' hooves - bizarrely impressive, but finally useless" (Craig Raine)
• "Is God dead? The very mention of his name and of prayer in a poem now arouses the derision of jobbing reviewers. Generally speaking, contemporary English poetry is cheap and shallow as a result", (R.S. Thomas)
• "I can foresee a time when poetry as we have known it will, like the Marxist state, wither away, and only poets be left", (Peter Whigam)
• "In keeping with fashion rather than strict honesty, I put the poems to do with unhappiness and searching at the end of the book, but the wheel has gone round often since then and most people read slim volumes backwards", (Hugo Williams)
• "one cannot help remembering how few poets have improved much after forty if indeed they didn't get a lot worse", (Hugo Williams)
• "Listening to English writers talking about surrealism is about as fruitful as listening to Frenchmen discussing a cricket match", (John Hartley Williams)
• "Pity for the poets who have no subject save themselves", (Christopher Logue)