As quoted in The Necessity of Art (1959) by Ernst Fischer, Ch. 1
New York Times (2 February 1986).
Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 43, November 11, 1947.
“What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.”
Interview with Donald Hall in November 1960, pub.'Paris Review' The Art of Poetry, no 26 (1961)
Remarks at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (14 June 1956) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 895, Senate Speech Files, John F. Kennedy Papers, Pre-Presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
Pre-1960
As quoted in C. F. Main & Peter J. Seng, Poems (Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), p. 3
“I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.”
Interview in The Review, published by Ian Hamilton (1972)
Nobel Lecture (8 December 1990)
Context: Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry. Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun.
“Poetry can be criticized only through poetry.”
“Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #117
Context: Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.
