“Poetic form is an abstraction from. or residue of musical form. The ghost of oral poetry never vanishes therefrom. All poetry was originally oral.”

— John Hollander

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John Hollander 31

American poet 1929–2013

James Fenton (1949) poet

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

“I chose to rewrite it in poetry because the original Ramayana was in poetry- the fact is, it’s sort of been corrupted into prose. In its original form it was an epic poem rather like the Iliad or works of that sort. Rather than traditional poetry, it was a verse novel, without a traditional structure. What I most wanted to do was to preserve the essential musicality of the lines. Especially as the Ramayana like so many stories, was based on a fundamentally oral tradition.”

Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster

On reworking the Ramayana in “An Interview With Daljit Nagra” https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/an-interview-with-daljit-nagra/ in The Bubble (2014 Sept 17)

“For most of history poetry has been an oral art, it retains the vestiges of orality, an experience embedded in the sensuality of sounds.”

Edward Hirsch (1950)

How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)

“Following the invention of writing, the special form of heightened language, characteristic of the oral tradition and a collective society, gave way to private writing. Records and messages displaced the collective memory. Poetry was written and detached from the collective festival.”

Harold Innis book Empire and Communications

2007 edition, p. 31.
Empire and Communications (1950)

“Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"The Divine Comedy" (1977)
Context: Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

“The difference between poetry and prose is not one of surface qualities, or form, or mode of expression, but of essence. The state of mind in which poetry originates must either seek poetic expression or it must not be expressed.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Form in Modern Poetry(1932)

“Poetry may be written on paper, but it’s an oral art. A good poem satisfies the ear. It creates a story or picture that grabs you.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Quoted in 'Venerable Poets :Words to Pop Music beat 'by Cynthia Wolfe Boyton.

“How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the highest form of self-deception.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Poetry is the art that is closest to music, standing between music and narrative orality (which can be speechmaking, sermon or theater). Poetry is the voice of what can’t be spoken, the mode of truth-telling when meaning needs to rise above or skim below everyday language in shapes not discernible by the ordinary mind. It trumps the rhetoric of politicians. Poetry is prophetic by nature and not bound by time. Because of these qualities poetry carries grief, heartache, ecstasy, celebration, despair, or searing truth more directly than any other literary art form. It is ceremonial in nature. Poetry is a tool for disruption and creation and is necessary for generations of humans to know who they are and who they are becoming in the wave map of history. Without poetry, we lose our way.”

Joy Harjo (1951) American writer

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)

“The best poetry of WW2, the most truthful and penetrating, poetry which is rooted in the ground of physical experience, suspicious of the abstract and conforming to the discipline of provenly effective forms.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Not Without Glory, 1976

“Poetic form is an abstraction from. or residue of musical form. The ghost of oral poetry never vanishes therefrom. All poetry was originally oral.”

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John Hollander 31

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