
English Prose Style (1928)
Literary Quotes
Source: The Poetics of Space
English Prose Style (1928)
Literary Quotes
Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Context: The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
"‘Interview with Nikita Gohkale’" https://vasfotios.wixsite.com/citylights/single-post/2017/12/12/Interview-with-Nikita-Gohkale. City Lights. December 12, 2017.
“Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.”
On Milton (1825)
Draft of letter to Richard Sassoon (December 1955), quoted in Joyce Carol Oates, "Raising Lady Lazarus," The New York Times (2000-11-05) http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/reviews/001105.05oatest.html
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Variant: Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.