Poetic Sound Quotes

I actually hate lyrics, and I hate it when they're quoted in reviews. I don't think they matter that much; it's the sounds of words - not the words - that I look for.

[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry.

The main thing a poem ought to be is musical. It should be rhythmic. You should hear it as a musical piece in your head as you're writing it.

Poetry stands or falls by its music.

Poetry is not an issue of form and enjambments. Poetry, as the word is classically used, has to do with sound and sense. It can be rhyme. It can be rhythm, pace, breath.

One of the important things about familiar form and metricality is that it draws attention to the physical nature of language: the spell-binding nature of it and the ceremony of articulation.

There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.

A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

All the Frank O'Hara types seem to have very little sound stuff going... it's so chatty or something.

I love playing with form. I love playing with sounds... I love music, and I love writing that has a musicality to it.

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Assonance is not the enemy of rhyme. It helps us to respect rhyme, which has been spoiled by mechanical use.

But to me the actual sound of the words is all important; I feel always that the words complete the music and must never be swallowed up in it.

When I read the Koran or hear it read, the images and the poetry, the sound of the language is very inspiring.