“There is a natural physiological tendency to pronounce in one breath successive groups of rhythmic feet, and the rhythmic content in the average length of breathing can only be called a verse.”

—  F. S. Flint

Contemporary French Poetry, The Poetry Review, 1914

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 "There is a natural physiological tendency to pronounce in one breath successive groups of rhythmic feet, and the rhythm…" by F. S. Flint?
F. S. Flint photo
F. S. Flint 12
English Imagist poet 1885–1960

Related quotes

“The basic line in any good verse is cadenced… building it around the natural breath structures of speech.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)

George C. Wolfe photo
Andrew Sega photo

“Most poetry involves rhythmically structured or patterned language, avoiding what might be called 'a singing line.”

Jan Zwicky (1955) Canadian philosopher

The Details interview with Jay Ruzesky (Winter 2008)

Wassily Kandinsky photo

“The disharmoniousness (one might say, the negative rhythm) of the individual forms was that which primarily drew me, attracted me, during the period to which this watercolor belongs. The so-called rhythmic always comes on its own because in general the person himself is rhythmically built. Thus at least on the surface, the rhythmic is innate in people. Children, 'primitive' peoples, and laymen draw rhythmically..
In that period my soul was especially enchanted by the not-fitting-together of drawn and painterly form. Line serves the plane in that the former bounds the latter. And it makes my heart race in those cases when the independent plane springs over the confining line: line and plane are not in tune! It was this that produced a strong inner emotion in me, the inner 'ah!”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

2 quotes from Kandinsky's letter to Hans Arp, November 1912; in Friedel, Wassily Kandinsky, p. 489; as cited in Negative Rhythm: Intersections Between Arp, Kandinsky, Münter, and Taeuber, Bibiana K. Obler (including transl. - Yale University Press, 2014
Kandinsky was trying to explain to Arp his state of mind when he made his sketch for 'Improvisation with Horses' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Wassily_Kandinsky_Cossacks_or_Cosaques_1910%E2%80%931.jpg, 1911, a watercolor belonging to Arp. Kandinsky had told Arp that he could have one of his pictures included in the 'Moderne Bund' (second) exhibition in Zurich, 1912, and this was the one Arp selected
1910 - 1915

Bob Dylan photo

“In the dark I hear the night birds call
I can feel a lover's breath
I sleep in the kitchen with my feet in the hall
Sleep is like a temporary death”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Modern Times (2006), Workingman's Blues #2

Edna St. Vincent Millay photo

“Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

"To a Poet Who Died Young" in Second April‎ (1921), p. 52
Context: Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath;
Here's a song was never sung:
Growing old is dying young.

Albert Gleizes photo
John Muir photo

“Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 3: The Yosemite National Park

Related topics