“All a poet can do today is warn.”

—  Wilfred Owen

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "All a poet can do today is warn." by Wilfred Owen?
Wilfred Owen photo
Wilfred Owen 23
English poet and soldier (1893-1918) 1893–1918

Related quotes

Wilfred Owen photo

“This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
'My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.”

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Draft for a preface http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/owen/preface.html to a collection of war poems he hoped to publish in 1919 (c. May 1918) and used in Poems of Wifred Owen (Memoir and notes).ed Edmund Blunden (1933).Chatto & Windus 1964.ASIN: B000GLY9CI

“I'm warning not to make today a victim of those plans.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 80
Context: I'm not saying it's wrong to plan for the future. I'm warning not to make today a victim of those plans.

Marianne Moore photo

“I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Source: Complete Poems

Barry Goldwater photo

“I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Address on religious factions (1981)
Context: I must make it clear that I don't condemn these groups for what they believe. I happen to share many of the values emphasized by these organizations.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." … This unrelenting obsession with a particular goal destroys the perspective of many decent people. They have become easy prey to manipulation and misjudgment.

William Julius Mickle photo

“None but a poet can translate a poet.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Introduction (p. cl)
The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India: an Epic Poem (1776)

Ralph Steadman photo

“Today we are sacks of shit bundled into flying tubes with a security warning secreted inside every orifice.”

Rumble In The Jungle: Ali v Foreman, p. 133
The Joke's Over (2006)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Ralph Ellison photo

“I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.”

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 21.

Terrance Hayes photo

“…I think that poets can do anything. With a novel, we all know about plot and character and yes, there’s experimental and people can recognize that, but I think that there are rules. I don’t think of poetry that way…”

Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet

On poets having certain freedoms in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)

Related topics