John Drinkwater Quotes

Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.

I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.

I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does.

I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word 'accessible.'

It's hard to judge literary merit.

Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.

I don't really have guilty pleasures. Anything musically that I fully, fully believe, is good no matter who the artist is, no matter what the marketing is behind it, I stand pretty firm.

What will they say about my poetry who never touched my blood?

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad poems or novels.

Many poets, as you know, are not good readers.

For me, it doesn't matter how difficult something is, it doesn't matter how impressive it is, it's what sounds best that really counts.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why.

I don't know why, it's the same reason why you like some music and you don't like others. There's something about it that you like. Ultimately I don't find it's in my best interests to try and analyze it, since it's fundamentally emotional.

When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.

Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson.

It's not a science when you are judging art, but we'd be remiss to say you can't look at something and say, 'This is more well done than that.'

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.