"The Divine Comedy" (1977)
Context: Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
“True poetry was never speech, but always song.”
What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)
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Herbert Read 42
English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art 1893–1968Related quotes
“Poetry is a form of necessary speech.”
How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)
“All poetry is the reproduction of the tones of speech”
Modern American Poetry 1950
“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee”
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday
Introduction
The Wedge (1944)
Context: Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form. The effect is beauty, what in a single object resolves our complex feelings of propriety.
“The language of poetry is the only speech which has in it the power of permanent impression”
Introduction
Bards of the Bible, 1850
“There is no true poetry unconcious inspiration.”
How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)