in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
My literary background was basically in poetry, but bad poetry, since only through bad poetry can you get to good poetry.
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Poetry
in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials, in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
She ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
Poets, although not insensible how much our language was already over-stocked with monosyllables, yet, to save time and pains, introduced that barbarous custom of abbreviating words to fit them to the measure of their verses.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
The starving poet business is no good nowadays.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and clich?, not from real life.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
Oh, what company good poets are!
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Poetry)
A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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