“Poetry is what looks like poetry, what sounds like poetry. It is metrical composition.”

—  J. V. Cunningham

'Poetry, Structure and Tradition' Dec 31 1939
General

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Poetry is what looks like poetry, what sounds like poetry. It is metrical composition." by J. V. Cunningham?
J. V. Cunningham photo
J. V. Cunningham9
American writer 1911–1985

Related quotes

“Poetry is not a metrical exercise.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

An Introduction to English Poetry, Viking Penguin, London 2002 ISBN 0141004398

Cassandra Clare photo

“Your friend's poetry is terrible," he said.
Clary blinked, caught momentarily off guard. "What?"
"I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Gertrude Stein photo

“Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. So that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"Poetry and Grammar"
Lectures in America (1935)

Martin Amis photo

“I know what his poetry will be about. What poetry is always about. The cruelty of the poet's mistress.”

Martin Amis book London Fields

London Fields (1989)

“Compose aloud: poetry is a sound.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

I SUGGEST Advice to Young Poets

“A teacher (of poetry) has to know and feel what poetry is, and be able - and this is crucial- to read it aloud effectively.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

'A Conversation with John Hollander' (by email) by Paul Devlin vol 1 St. John's University Humanities Review April 2003

“Sound poetry is a fusion of music and literature.”

Dick Higgins (1938–1998) English composer and poet

The Origin of Happenings (1976)
Variant: Concrete poetry is a fusion of visual art and poetry.

W.B. Yeats photo

“What can be explained is not poetry.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“Sandburg is unreadable today only because of the way he wrote. His prose was bad poetry, like his poetry.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'On American Movie Critics' (New York Times Book Review, June 4, 2006)
Essays and reviews

James Dickey photo

“What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe”

James Dickey (1923–1997) American writer

Related topics