“In the old romanticism the poem was an uncommon effect of common experience on the poet. All interest in the poem centred in this mysterious capacity of the poet for overfeeling, for being overaffected. In Poe the old romanticism ended and the new romanticism began. That is, the interest was broadened to include the reader: the end of the poem was pushed ahead a stage, from the poet to the reader. The uncommon effect of experience on the poet became merely incidental to the uncommon effect which he might have on the reader. Mystery was replaced by science; inspiration by psychology.”
"What is a Poem?" from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)
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Laura Riding Jackson42
poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer 1901–1991Related quotes
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
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“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.”
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Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic
Lecture, "The Themes of Robert Frost" (1947)
Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet
National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: When a poet is being a poet — that is, when he is writing or thinking about writing — he cannot be concerned with anything but the making of a poem. If the poem is to turn out well, the poet cannot have thought of whether it will be saleable, or of what its effect on the world should be; he cannot think of whether it will bring him honor, or advance a cause, or comfort someone in sorrow. All such considerations, whether silly or generous, would be merely intrusive; for, psychologically speaking, the end of writing is the poem itself.
Dana Gioia (1950) American writer
"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews
“He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
Introduction to Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845).
1840s