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"And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious."
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"That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium."

"My love is a winter's mistgently dissolvingthrough the windowat the nape of your neck."

"Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe."

"Whatever you get out of poetry - take it. take it. take it. Words are better off felt than understood."

"I do think that poetry is important though, if you don't strive at it, if you don't fill it full of stars and falseness."

"But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."

"May this poetrybe the homeyou will someday come back to."

"The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors. The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor. How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."

"Poetry keeps mein a highly drunken stateof divinity."
Explore more quotes by John C. Ransom

"When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious."
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