"Those who actually set out to see the……" — James Fenton
"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 themselves to what extent they are cowards. But the tests they set themselves - there is a dead body, can you bear to look at it? - are nothing in comparison with the tests that are sprung on them. It is not the obvious tests that matter (do you go to pieces in a mortar attack?) but the unexpected ones (here is a man on the run, seeking your help - can you face him honestly?)."
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James Fenton
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52 Quotes by James Fenton
James Fenton has 52 quotes on this site.
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What happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page.
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A cabaret song has got to be written - for the middle voice, ideally - because you've got to hear…
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Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the…
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Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.
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Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always…
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For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French…
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A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I…
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At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic…
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Considering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it is…
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Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper…
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The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.
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English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we…
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