quotes from classic
/ page 874 of 1205 /One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.
more quotes from James Fenton
Rhyme is a mnemonic device, an aid to the memory. And some poems are themselves mnemonics, that is to say, the whole purpose of the poem is to enable us to remember some information.
more quotes from James Fenton
The 1960s was a period when writers in the West began to be aware of the extraordinary eloquence and popular attraction of the Russian poets such as Yevtushenko and Voznesensky - oppositional figures who could draw crowds. The Russian poets recited from memory as a matter of course.
more quotes from James Fenton
Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.
more quotes from James Fenton
A cabaret song has got to be written - for the middle voice, ideally - because you've got to hear the wit of the words. And a cabaret song gives the singer room to act, more even than an opera singer.
more quotes from James Fenton
Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing.
more quotes from James Fenton
Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.
more quotes from James Fenton
At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.
more quotes from James Fenton
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.
more quotes from James Fenton
The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme.
more quotes from James Fenton
Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral.
more quotes from James Fenton
The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.
more quotes from James Fenton
In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.
more quotes from James Fenton
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval 'Carmina Burana' - tends to be somewhat crude stuff in comparison with the classical verse that doesn't.
more quotes from James Fenton
Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.
more quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.
more quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American.
more quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.
more quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I've seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted.
more quotes from Rachel Field
Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.
more quotes from Rachel Field
