requisite madness

But if any man come to the gates of poetry without madness of the Muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works of sanity with him be brought to naught by the poetry of madness, and behold their place is nowhere to be found.

—Socrates (Plato), Phaedrus edited by R. Hackworth, Cambridge, 1952

enter at your own risk

Poetry is not a fiefdom or a private domain. It is a city whose gates stand wide; which has never exactly welcomed its newcomers but has always found room for them.

—Eavan Boland, Ronald Duncan Lecture, 1994