“You must let your poems ride their luck
On the back of the sharp morning air
Touched with the fragrance of mint and thyme…
And everything else is LIT-RIT-CHER.”
Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure
Éparse au vent crispé du matin
Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym…
Et tout le reste est littérature.
Source: "Art poétique", from Jadis et naguère (1884), Line 33, Sorrell p. 125
Original
Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure Éparse au vent crispé du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym… Et tout le reste est littérature.
"Art poétique", from Jadis et naguère (1884)
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Paul Verlaine 11
French poet 1844–1896Related quotes
“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.
“Push your luck, gorgeous, and eventually luck pushes back.”
Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 8 “The Five-Year Game: Infinite Variation” section 8 (p. 468)
“Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth.”
Nisi quod in se habet mordacis aliquid veritatis.
Letter 31
Letters
“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
Variant: If you surrender to the wind you can ride it.
Source: Song of Solomon (1977)
“A poem doesn’t do everything for you.
You are supposed to go on with your thinking.”
"Song of Winnie"
Winnie (1988)
Context: I pass you my Poem.
A poem doesn’t do everything for you.
You are supposed to go on with your thinking.
You are supposed to enrich
the other person’s poem with your extensions,
your uniquely personal understandings,
thus making the poem serve you.
