“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Robert A. Heinlein 557

American science fiction author 1907–1988

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Obscurity of the Poet”, p. 4
Poetry and the Age (1953)

“I've read The Satanic Verses and I thought it a nasty, sneering, free-thinking book… I can understand why the book is offensive and it didn't seem to me to be anything but offensive when I read it.”

Maurice Cowling (1926–2005) historian

Interviewed in Naim Attallah, Singular Encounters (Quartet Books, 1990), p. 142.

“Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most…are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

Source: An Introduction to English Poetry (2002), Ch. 3: The Training of the Poet (p. 21)

“At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and name yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, 'But are ye sure he's not a dunce?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's.
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

“Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book XII: The Book and the Ring, line 873.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

“…how poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, “Since you won’t read me, I’ll make sure you can’t”—is one of the most complicated and interesting of stories.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Obscurity of the Poet". p. 9
No Other Book: Selected Essays (1999)
Variant: How poet and public stared at each other with righteous indignation, till the poet said, “Since you won’t read me, I’ll make sure you can’t” — is one of the most complicated and interesting of stories.

“But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

On T. S. Eliot (1984) by Peter Ackroyd, in which the Eliot estate forbade quotation from Eliot’s books and letters, The New Yorker (25 March 1985)

“A great poet belongs to no country; his works are public property, and his Memoirs the inheritance of the public.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

As quoted in Conversations of Lord Byron with Thomas Medwin (1832), Preface.

“I got nasty habits; I take tea at three.”

Mick Jagger (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

“The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking..”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”

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