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Wallace Stevens278
American poet 1879–1955Related quotes
“There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“Truly fine poetry must be read aloud.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
"The Divine Comedy" (1977)
Context: Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Times (1993) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 391
General sources
“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Variant: There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art
Form in Modern Poetry(1932)
“Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
Source: Selected Letters
