James Fenton Quotes

53 quotes in 920 categories

• Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking…
• What happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page.
• A cabaret song has got to be written - for the middle voice, ideally - because you've got to hear the wit of the words.…
• Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation…
• Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.
• Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of…
• For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on the other. The…
• A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living in a pensione…
• At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length…
• Considering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it is surprising that so little of…
• Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good…
• The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.
• English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the…
• At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.
• Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.
• I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.
• I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.
• Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot…
• In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.
• Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

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