James Fenton Quotes

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

In every culture, in every language, there is expressive play, expressive word play; there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

It's not easy to define poetry.

The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.

It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

Emily Dickinson has great sound and sense.

I studied poetry in college and for a year in an MFA program. As time went on, my poems got more and more complicated. What I was really trying to do was tell stories.

I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question.

I love words; I love poetry.

I often say poetry was my first love.

I didn't read poetry seriously until college, when I really began to devour it in a very intense way. I also discovered that a poet is a maker. Before that, I thought a poet was someone who wrote about his own experiences.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

I keep trying to define 'poetry,' but it's so difficult.

For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.

I believe poetry has very little to do with memory.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Granted, I'm someone who loves words. I've always loved poetry - so it's suited to me.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

I like the machinery of poems, especially when they have human warmth.