
The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz
Lives of the Poets, Phoenix, 1988
The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz
9-10
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)
On the art of poetry in “An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate” https://poets.org/text/interview-joy-harjo-us-poet-laureate?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiJP5naHW5QIV0Rx9Ch0tGgkkEAAYASAAEgIJD_D_BwE in Poets.org (2019 Mar 31)
“Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself.”
January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)
Context: Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 15.
“Poetry is what looks like poetry, what sounds like poetry. It is metrical composition.”
'Poetry, Structure and Tradition' Dec 31 1939
General