“Hebrew poetry is,
prose with a sort of heightened consciousness' Ecstasy
affords
the occasion expediency, determines the form”

“Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.”

“There is only one art of writing, and that is the art of poetry.. whether it is in the form of prose or in rhyme and meter or in rhymed cadence.”

“Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. So that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose.”

“I chose to rewrite it in poetry because the original Ramayana was in poetry- the fact is, it’s sort of been corrupted into prose. In its original form it was an epic poem rather like the Iliad or works of that sort. Rather than traditional poetry, it was a verse novel, without a traditional structure. What I most wanted to do was to preserve the essential musicality of the lines. Especially as the Ramayana like so many stories, was based on a fundamentally oral tradition.”

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.”

“Prose is walking; poetry is flying”

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.”

“The difference between poetry and prose is not one of surface qualities, or form, or mode of expression, but of essence. The state of mind in which poetry originates must either seek poetic expression or it must not be expressed.”

“Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.”