“There is one way, and only one, of correctly reading a Latin hexameter. There may be three or four ways of reading an English blank verse line. I venture to say that no two mortals ever read aloud any given long passage of verse with precisely the same rhythms.”

— John Livingston Lowes

Conventions and Revolt in Poetry (1919)

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John Livingston Lowes 2

American academic 1867–1945

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

“The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear. The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Drums of Morning, 1992

“To understand Vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Dial (January 1917).

“Take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be read, and my verse becomes all right.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Letter to Robert Bridges (25 October 1879 )
Letters, etc

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

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.