Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops. — James Fenton Copy Share Image
What happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page. — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15. — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral. — James Fenton Copy Share Image
In song the same rule applies as in dramatic verse: the meaning must yield itself, or yield itself sufficiently to arouse the… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet.… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the… — 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 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
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 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 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
Lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: 'lane' rhymes… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
'Love' is so short of perfect rhymes that convention allows half-rhymes like 'move.' The alternative is a plague of doves, or a… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open… — James Fenton 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
“It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down. It is not the houses. It is the spaces between… — 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
One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to… — James Fenton 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 Copy Share Image
Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity… — 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 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 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 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
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
The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins. And even today, in the prolonged aftermath of modernism, in places where… — James Fenton 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
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
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in… — James Fenton 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
“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 Copy Share Image
I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem. — 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
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
Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse… — 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 modern spelling… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet. But the… — 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 part oral,… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
In song the same rule applies as in dramatic verse: the meaning must yield itself, or yield itself sufficiently to arouse the attention and… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
'Love' is so short of perfect rhymes that convention allows half-rhymes like 'move.' The alternative is a plague of doves, or a kind of… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable. — James Fenton Copy Share Image
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
The Italian word 'stanza' means 'a room', and a room is a good way to conceive of a stanza. A room, generally speaking, is… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
