“You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form.”
Originally delivered at a poetry reading at Princeton University (26 October 1937), published in Collected Poems, Prose & Plays (1995)
General sources
Context: When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don’t feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing. … You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism — for the New Republic.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Robert Frost265
American poet 1874–1963Related quotes
Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru
Statement (1968) as quoted in Sathya Sai Speaks Volume VIII, p. 99f
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Context: One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.
Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster
On how he views poetry in “Daljit Nagra” https://www.aestheticamagazine.com/daljit-nagra/ in Aesthetica
Balachandra Rajan (1920–2009) Indian writer
The Overwhelming Question ' University of Toronto Press 1976
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
“Socialism urged to find dictator,” Berkeley Daily Gazette (Nov. 30, 1927)
1890s
Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist
Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 455.
