Art Quote by James Fenton

The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?

— John Crowe Ransom

Modernism has a reputation for being a forbidding phenomenon: its visual arts disconcertingly non-representational, its literary efforts devoid of the consolations of plot and…

— Will Self

“The sense of modernism is often seen in the determination of each of the arts to come as close as possible to its own…

— Milan Kundera

People say modernism killed poetry for them: it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't touch a popular musical oral tradition. Years ago, you memorized and read…

— Campbell McGrath

As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty.

— Will Self

Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designer. Modernism emphasized straight lines, eliminating the expressive S curve.…

— Eva Zeisel

Part of the triumph of modernist poetry is, indeed, to have demonstrated the great extent to which verse can do without explicit meaning and…

— Clement Greenberg

Paradoxically, the simpler poetry is, the more difficult it becomes for a critic to discuss intelligently. Trained to explicate, the critic often loses the…

— Dana Gioia

I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader…

— Lydia Davis

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity…

— Randall Jarrell

Now, in our opinion no author should be blamed for obscurity, nor should any pains be grudged in the effort to understand him, provided…

— Alice Meynell

Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time.

— Mary Karr