“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”
As quoted in Robert Frost: the Trial by Existence (1960) by Elizabeth S. Sergeant, Ch. 18
1960s
Variant: Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
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Robert Frost 265
American poet 1874–1963Related quotes
“Take it, and cut your brother's throat with it, and take back the honor of your blood.”
Source: City of Heavenly Fire
“You go to truth by way of poetry and I go to poetry by way of truth.”
“I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will.”
“The line is a way of thinking in poetry, by poetry.. it paces the poem.”
'Five points' vol 4 no 2 Georgia State University Press Winter 2000
Wordsworth, originally published as "Preface to the Poems of Wordsworth" in Macmillan's Magazine (July 1879)
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888)
Context: If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the word ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion, they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day, they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers, they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayam's words: "Let us make up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque." Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them, in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
“The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.”
Source: "Against Sincerity", in American Poetry Review, Vol. XXII, No. 5 (1993), p. 29
Diana Wrayburn, to Clary Fray, about the Morgenstern sword Heosphoros, pg. 146
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)