John Crowe Ransom Quotes

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

Writing poems is a chance to construct spaces that I want to imaginatively inhabit.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

There is no more reason why the features belonging to a picture should be distorted for the purpose of such imaginative suggestion than that the poet's metaphors should spoil his words for the ordinary uses of man.

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

Every device there is in language is there to be used, if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twistings and convolutions of words, the inventions and contrivances, are all part of the joy that is part of the painful, voluntary work.

I am a poet, and I speak poetically.

I like bringing my poet brain and sensibility to lyrics I write.

Poetry has become the higher algebra of metaphors.

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

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

I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

Jigging veins of rhyming mother wits.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

I do think that all of us think in poems.

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.