John Hollander: Poetry

“Rhythm and repetition of sounds, words and phrases make spoken poetry sound different to ordinary discourse.”

“The building blocks of poetry itself are elements if fiction -fable, 'image', metaphor-all the material if the nonliteral.”

“A teacher (of poetry) has to know and feel what poetry is, and be able - and this is crucial- to read it aloud effectively.”

“One crosses the brink of literalness into poetry by desiring, noticing, fixing on something and wondering what to make of it.”

“Major poetry not only 'employs' metaphor, irony and other tropes (and is of them) but always and explicitly or implicitly considers the nature of the trope itself.”

“The study of rhetoric distiguishes between tropes, or figuresvof meaning such as metaphor and metonymy, and schemes, or surface patterns of words. Poetry is a matter of trope; and verse, of scheme or design.”

“Poetry may be written on paper, but it’s an oral art. A good poem satisfies the ear. It creates a story or picture that grabs you.”

“The warfare between poetry and philosophy certainly started with Plato, who was both poet and philosopher.”

“Poetic form is an abstraction from. or residue of musical form. The ghost of oral poetry never vanishes therefrom. All poetry was originally oral.”

“The blueprints of verse can be used to build things made of literal, or nonpoetic material, which is why most verse is not poetry.”

“You can teach the writing of verse.. like prose.. an instrument.. and the recognition of true poetry. The rest, writers must teach them selves.”