“Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy.”

— Randall Jarrell

“Reflections on Wallace Stevens”, p. 127, originally in Partisan Review, Vol. 18, (May/June 1951)
Poetry and the Age (1953)
Context: Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy. Everything in the philosophical poem has to satisfy irreconcilable requirements: for instance, the last demand that we should make of philosophy (that it be interesting) is the first we make of a poem; the philosophical poet has an elevated and methodical, but forlorn and absurd air as he works away at his flying tank, his sewing-machine that also plays the piano.

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poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet

The Great Modern Poets, London, 2006

“Poetry is not a branch of analytical philosophy. It is a primal, holistic kind of human communication. A poet needs innocence as much as knowledge, emotion as much as intelligence, vulnerability as much as rigor. A poet can become too smart for his or her own good and forget the childlike pleasures of sound and story, sense, and sensuality that poetry should provide. The challenge for a writer is to master the medium of poetry without losing that inner innocence.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

“Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

“Poetry is the most bodliy of arts, the medium of poetry is the column of breath rising from the diaphragm in the individual's chest to be shaped into meaning sounds inside the mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz

“For literary purposes, the art of writing poetry can be simply defined as: A creative act using language as a medium refined to an art.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)

“One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #62

“You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Du wolltest die Philosophie zerstören, und die Poesie, um Raum zu gewinnen für die Religion und Moral, die du verkanntest: aber du hast nichts zerstören können als dich selber.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (1968) #90

“One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

On peut citer de mauvais vers, quand ils sont d'un grand poète.
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
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

“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

“Sandburg is unreadable today only because of the way he wrote. His prose was bad poetry, like his poetry.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'On American Movie Critics' (New York Times Book Review, June 4, 2006)
Essays and reviews

“Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy.”

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