“All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.”
Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist
“One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.”
On peut citer de mauvais vers, quand ils sont d'un grand poète. <br class="br">Letter 4: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_4 <br class="br">Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)
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Do you have more details about the quote "One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet." by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos?
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos16
French novelist, official and army general 1741–1803Related quotes
“We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“I believe that only poetry counts… A great novelist is first of all a great poet.”
Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 66
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
Complete Prose Works (1892), III. Notes Left Over 3. Ventures, on an Old Theme, p.324 http://books.google.com/books?id=UJA1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA324 <br class="br">Context: If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere — probably more than the rest of the world combined.<br>Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations.<br>To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
“I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets.”
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet
Preface.
The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717)
Context: I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.
R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet
R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)
Context: Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth.