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"If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it."
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"You need a poetic touch from the outer space? Then you need the moonlight!"
"I love writing poetry because it's pretty. I love writing pretty."
"Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others."
"I can write no stately proemAs a prelude to my lay;From a poet to a poemI would dare to say.For if of these fallen petalsOne to you seem fair,Love will waft it till it settlesOn your hair.And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand."
"At seventeen I tried to write poetry confining myself solely to Anglo-Saxon words - don't know if it helped, but it made me more concrete ..."
"The mint from your breath, the milk from your breast, the best of your mind, now in its worst state of condition. From the womb to the tomb, as a mild flower, you break your petals upon blossom, and seize death openly. Leaving your fragrance to spin and dance, one last time before being blown away."
"Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet."
"The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is."
Explore more quotes by Lascelles Abercrombie
"Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours."
"With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem."
"There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny."
"That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been."
"The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always."
"By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made."
"The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does."
"No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded."
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