“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting those old reprobates the words.”
Letter to Ellen O'Leary (3 February 1889)
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W.B. Yeats 255
Irish poet and playwright 1865–1939Related quotes
English Prose Style (1928)
Literary Quotes
L'oeuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poëte, qui cède l'initiative aux mots.
"Crise de Vers", La Revue Blanche (September 1895 )as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rosemary Lloyd, p. 55.
Observations
On the realization that he was a poet in “Interview with Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/37/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-benjamin-zephaniah in Writers & Artists
“Words cannot always do the work we need them to. Music is there for when words fail us.”
Source: The Wise Man's Fear
The Poet (1830)
Context: There was no blood upon her maiden robes
Sunn'd by those orient skies;
But round about the circles of the globes
Of her keen
And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame
WISDOM, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power — a sacred name.
And when she spake,
Her words did gather thunder as they ran,
And as the lightning to the thunder
Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
Making earth wonder,
So was their meaning to her words. No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirl'd,
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word
She shook the world.
On how she composes character dialogue in “Tracy Chevalier: 'Slavery has to be raised until it's put to bed'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/17/tracy-chevalier-interview-last-runaway in The Guardian (2013 Mar 16)
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
"Driving While Black" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell103107.php3 (31 October 2007), Jewish World Review.
2000s