“What good poetry and good prose have in common is vitality of rhythm.”

“Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.”

“Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. So that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose.”

“Every phrase can be a good lyric if it has the good rhythm.”

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.”

“Prose is walking; poetry is flying”

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.”

“Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.”

“Poetry must be as well written as prose.”

“By definition, if prose is a river, poetry is a fountain.”