“Prose uses the medium of language whilst poetry serves language and explores it.”
Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet
The Great Modern Poets, London, 2006
“Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy.”
“Reflections on Wallace Stevens”, p. 127, originally in Partisan Review, Vol. 18, (May/June 1951)
Poetry and the Age (1953)
Context: Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy. Everything in the philosophical poem has to satisfy irreconcilable requirements: for instance, the last demand that we should make of philosophy (that it be interesting) is the first we make of a poem; the philosophical poet has an elevated and methodical, but forlorn and absurd air as he works away at his flying tank, his sewing-machine that also plays the piano.
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Randall Jarrell215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965Related quotes
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“One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.”
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