James Fenton Quotes

Poetry was the first step, and from the age of 18, there was nothing else I wanted to do.

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.

I feel like I am in the service of the poem. The poem isn't something I make. The poem is something I serve.

It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.

I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.

I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity.

To the poet fated to be a poet, self-expression is as natural and as involuntary as breathing is to us ordinary mortals.

My brother told me I was going to be a poet. I had a good brother. He did a lot of good brotherly work.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.

I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading.

Of course, I have to consider that I've written a lot of prose, but I do in my heart think of myself as being originally, and still primarily, a poet.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn't poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.

I just discovered when I was, oh, 12 or 13, that I was very interested in language - and this showed itself as poetry. There was no looking back.

What I try to do is to go into a poem - and one writes them, of course, poem by poem - to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it's going to end up.

I don't think anybody is a poet 24/7, only in those rare moments when a person is producing a poem.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry.

I've always written, all my life, and when I was very young I developed an interest in poetry.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

I must say, it was a lot easier writing novels than I thought it would be. I think it's because I'm a novelist at heart, and it took me a while to figure that out.

Once I started writing, I realized just how much I really enjoyed it. I was kinda good at it, so I kept at it.

Find a poet whose style you like, emulate that style, then deal with things that you know about - don't waste your time looking for your own style.' I wish I could remember who told me that, because I'd like to congraulate him. I've emulated all the old guys - Tennyson, Alexander Pope.