Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity… — James Fenton Art Copy Share Image
The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral. Its transmission today is still in… — James Fenton Acquainted Copy Share Image
A cabaret song has got to be written - for the middle voice, ideally - because you've got to hear the wit… — James Fenton Cabaret Copy Share Image
'What is this', and 'How is this done?' are the first two questions to ask of any work of art. The second… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to… — James Fenton English language Copy Share Image
Sometimes I have thought that a song should look disappointing on the page - a little thin, perhaps, a little repetitive, or… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
The iambic line, with its characteristic forward movement from short to long, or light to heavy, or unstressed to stressed, is the… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of… — James Fenton Addiction Copy Share Image
What I want, when I write a poem, is no more than this: that it be preserved in some published form so… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on… — James Fenton Age Copy Share Image
Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
I've not been a prolific poet, and it always seemed to me to be a bad idea to feel that you had… — James Fenton Bad idea Copy Share Image
The term 'epitaph' itself means 'something to be spoken at a burial or engraved upon a tomb.' When an epitaph is a… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
The 1960s was a period when writers in the West began to be aware of the extraordinary eloquence and popular attraction of… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Generally speaking, rhyme is the marker for the end of a line. The first rhyme-word is like a challenge thrown down, which… — James Fenton Challenges Copy Share Image
No poet is required to write in stanzas, or indeed in regular forms at all. Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode' has a rhyme… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Metrics are not a device for restraining the mad, any more than 'open form' or free verse is a prairie where a… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the… — James Fenton Death Copy Share Image
The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins. And even today, in the prolonged aftermath of modernism, in places where… — James Fenton Aftermath Copy Share Image
In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough.… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Rhyme is a mnemonic device, an aid to the memory. And some poems are themselves mnemonics, that is to say, the whole… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This… — James Fenton Ballads Copy Share Image
Hearing that the same men who brought us 'South Park' were mounting a musical to be called 'The Book of Mormon,' we… — James Fenton Book Copy Share Image
A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
“God, A Poem 'I didn't exist at Creation, I didn't exist at the Flood, And I won't be around for Salvation To… — James Fenton God Copy Share Image
Working alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum… — James Fenton Alone Copy Share Image
When Mr Ackroyd says that in the 18th century, stranglers bit off the noses of their victims, I feel that he probably… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats's odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in… — James Fenton Academic Copy Share Image
“It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down. It is not the houses. It is the spaces between… — James Fenton Destruction Copy Share Image
