“Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be.”

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

Letter to Coventry Patmore, published in The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges (1955), edited by C. C. Abbott, p. 263
Letters, etc

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81

English poet 1844–1889

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“Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be.”

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81

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