poetic elements Quotes

Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.

The long poem cannot be a digressive, expansive, boring exposition. It is really made of very sharp, Imagistic, quintessential poetic elements.

Though my poems are about evenly split between traditionally formal work that uses rhyme and meter and classical structure, and work that is freer, I feel that the music of language remains at the core of it all. Sound, rhythm, repetition, compression - these elements of my poetry are also elements of my prose.

Virtually every beginning poet hurts himself by an addiction to adjectives. Verbs are by far the most important things for poems-especially wonderful tough monosyllables like "gasp" and "cry." Nouns are the next most important. Adjectives tend to be useless.

I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar.

You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.

Tension is an interesting quality - and architecture must have it. There should be elements of the inexplicable, the mysterious, and the poetic in something that is perfectly rational.

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world.