
"Poetry" (1977)
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
"Poetry" (1977)
At an interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy on January 29th, 2010.
2010s
On his preferred poetry style in “Prose Interviews London Poet Raymond Antrobus” https://medium.com/prose-matters/prose-interviews-london-poet-raymond-antrobus-c0e1fdf720b9 in Medium Magazine (2016 Mar 30)
“…modern poetry is necessarily obscure; if the reader can’t get it, let him eat Browning…”
“Changes of Attitude and Rhetoric in Auden’s Poetry”, p. 149
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
“Her Shield”, p. 187
Poetry and the Age (1953)
Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
“You have to be a speedy reader because there’s so so much to read.”
Source: I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!