“It is a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.”
As quoted in The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary Special Supplement (1966), p. 2047
Edith Sitwell:
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Edith Sitwell: Citations en anglais
“The flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.”
Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind
This is from the poem "Answers" by Elizabeth Jennings, which has wrongly been attributed to Sitwell at a few sites on the internet.
Misattributed
Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind
“Mother or Murderer, you have
given or taken life —
Now all is one!”
"Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise"
The Canticle of the Rose (1949)
“I wouldn't dream of following a fashion… how could one be a different person every three months?”
Source: The Last Years of a Rebel (1967), p. 24
Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind
Lecture "Young Poets" (1957) published in Mightier Than the Sword: The P.E.N. Hermon Ould Memorial Lectures, 1953-1961 (1964), p. 56
Variants:
Poetry is the deification of reality.
As quoted in Life magazine (4 January 1963)
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
As quoted in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 247
As quoted in 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1995) by Evan Esa
“I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.”
Life magazine (4 January 1963) attributed variant: I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.
Quoted in Edith Sitwell, a Unicorn Among Lions (1981) by Victoria Glendinning, p. 54, and in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 74
“I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.”
Last words to her personal secretary (Elizabeth Salter) as she was being carried into an ambulance.
The Last Years of a Rebel (1967)
“I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.”
As quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 226
“People are usually made Dames for virtues I do not possess.”
Source: The Last Years of a Rebel (1967), p. 24
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Still Falls the Rain (1940)
"Clowns' Houses"
Clowns' Houses (1918)
“The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of "a moment of their other lives"”
a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.
"The Poet's Vision" (1959)
