“In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets' nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.”

— Al Alvarez

Page 25.
The Savage God (1971)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Al Alvarez 5

English poet, novelist, essayist and critic 1929–2019

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), Chapter One : The Fear of Poetry
Context: Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling, and what is the use of truth!
How do we use feeling?
How do we use truth! However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
If we use the resources we now have, we and the world itself may move in one fullness. Moment to moment, we can grow, if we can bring ourselves to meet the moment with our lives.

“From the time I was little, I always felt like an outsider. I always felt nervous and uncomfortable with myself.”

Lauren Tom (1970) actress, voice actress

“The best poetry of the second World war written by both British & American servicemen need not fear comparison with the generally more well highly regarded work of the 1914-18 poets.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Introductory Essay 'Setting the Scene'
Not Without Glory, 1976

“The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

“Poetry is creative expression; Prose is constructive expression. … by creative I mean original. In Poetry the words are born or reborn in the act of thinking. … There is no time interval between the words and the thought when a real poet writes, both of them happen together, and both the thought and the word are Poetry.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

English Prose Style (1928)
Literary Quotes

“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 - will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.”

Marc Norman (1941) Screenwriter

Source: Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay

“The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all's poetry with him.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Babylon"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

Andrew R. MacAndrew (trans.) A Precocious Autobiography (1963; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) p. 7.

“He who writes poetry is not a poet. He whose poetry has become his life, and who has made his life his poetry — it is he who is a poet.”

Subramanya Bharathi (1882–1921) Tamil poet

English translation originally from "Subramaniya Bharathi" at Tamilnation.org, also quoted in "Colliding worlds of tradition and revolution" in The Hindu (13 December 2009) http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/colliding-worlds-of-tradition-and-revolution/article662079.ece

“In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets' nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.”

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