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"The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?"
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Exlpore more Poetry quotes
"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."
"Poetry. i am not writing it.(make way for me please)it is my skin. dripping with light."
"Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words."
"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."
"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."
"I once began to ask around what constitutes a good poem. It felt petty, in a sense. A boy would need no help in deciding which girls he thinks are pretty."
"Rejoice with glitters of ashes tonightSparkling for moon's spiced silver biteUpon skin of darkness, loving night moreStorm begins unlocking cold wind's door."
"A chronic poet should always be an inveterate nature-lover."
"The world of light and starry grace;within your mind I live to trace.Your thought's speed in thunder's glory,lightening my being with dream's story.I embrace the tree carrying your nameYour unspoken wish : the heart of fame."
Explore more quotes by John C. Ransom
"He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form."
"And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious."
"For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties."
"It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things."
"When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble."
"Or he can work it out as a metrical and formal exercise, but he will be disappointed in its content. The New Year's prospect fairly chills his daunting breast."
"Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes."
"Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents."
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