“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
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 Following Copy Share Image
What happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page. — James Fenton Century 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 Born Copy Share Image
“The great cause of the new Republican intake is the reduction of the deficit but to anyone seeking evidence of sincere attempts… — James Fenton 2010 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
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
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
A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living… — James Fenton Allowance 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
Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line,… — James Fenton Asking 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 Disappointing 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
The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is… — James Fenton Complexes Copy Share Image
An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words… — James Fenton Amount Copy Share Image
In my opinion, it is easier to avoid iambic rhythms, when writing in syllabics, if you create a line or pattern of… — James Fenton Avoid 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 Attraction 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
“Stay near to me and I’ll Stay near to you – As near as you are dear to me will do.” — James Fenton Love 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 Any Copy Share Image
Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world. — James Fenton Tough 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 Doe Copy Share Image
Oh let us not be condemned for what we are. It is enough to account for what we do. — James Fenton Accounts Copy Share Image
Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what… — James Fenton Done 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 18th century Copy Share Image
