John Drinkwater Quotes

It's not easy to define poetry.

I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable.

I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems.

I started writing poetry in high school because I wanted desperately to write, but somehow, writing stories didn't appeal to me, and I loved the flow and the feel and sense of poetry, especially that of what one might call formal verse.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

People used to say poems were different to songs but I don't think they are.

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

I've always thought my poems told stories.

I work best in rhyme and meter. I was most confident of myself in that way.

I like poems that are complex.

I like to write poetry.

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.

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

I love to write poetry.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

Actually, I'm working on a book of poetry.

So the best way to understand poetry, which is made by men, is to imitate, and that goes back to making work as a kind of doorway into new work, as opposed to making work as a mirror of the old work.

I don't understand why people are going mad about the lyrics I write? Do they expect everyone to become Mirza Ghalib?

I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.

Very nice couplet, although there are dull stretches.

All poetry is experimental poetry.

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.