“All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.”

"The Poet & The City", p. 84
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

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 "All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic …" by W. H. Auden?
W. H. Auden photo
W. H. Auden 122
Anglo-American poet 1907–1973

Related quotes

Wallace Stevens photo

“What the poet has in mind . . . is that poetic value is an intrinsic value. It is not the value of knowledge. It is not the value of faith. It is the value of imagination.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value
Context: What the poet has in mind... is that poetic value is an intrinsic value. It is not the value of knowledge. It is not the value of faith. It is the value of imagination. The poet tries to exemplify it, in part as I have tried to exemplify it here, by identifying it with an imaginative activity that diffuses itself throughout our lives.

William Shakespeare photo
Wallace Stevens photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“Deceiving himself well is the first quality of the statesman.”

Ibid., p. 241
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Saber iludir-se bem é a primeira qualidade do estadista.

Roger Fry photo

“I fancy all distinctively poetical language ought to be banned and the poetry come out of the quality of the idea and the intensity or passion with which it is expressed.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

Letter to R. C. Trevelyan , September 7, 1932
Other Quotes

William Cowper photo

“There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 285.

Ernest Flagg photo
Rollo May photo
William Cowper photo

“Those golden times
And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 514.

Garrison Keillor photo

“A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 184

Related topics