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James Fenton Quotes

British - Poet | April 25, 1949 -

No poet is required to write in stanzas, or indeed in regular forms at all. Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode' has a rhyme scheme and sequence of long and short lines that goes without regular pattern, following the mood and whim of the poet. Such a form is known as an irregular ode.

Short Long Mood Write Without Poet

The Italian word 'stanza' means 'a room', and a room is a good way to conceive of a stanza. A room, generally speaking, is sufficient for its own purposes, but it does not constitute a house. A stanza has the same sense of containment, without being complete or independent.

Good House Independent Way Room Own

I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.

Single Line See Whole Poem Although

At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.

Practice Reach English Whole Four

At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.

Line Somewhere Relaxed English Most

The iambic line, with its characteristic forward movement from short to long, or light to heavy, or unstressed to stressed, is the quintessential measure of English verse.

Light Forward Short Long Measure

Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral.

History Poetry Within Origin Oral

The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme.

Good Poetry Genius Sound Same Theme

For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on the other. The choice is between the nullity and vanity of our first efforts, and the developing of a sense of idiom, form, structure, metre, rhythm, line - all the fundamental characteristics of this verbal art.

Age Today Freedom Art Vanity Choice

One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.

Poetry Face Problem Train Write How

In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.

Training Poetry Writing Enough Know

There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet. But the thing you must try to write, when you do so, is a real sonnet, and not a practice sonnet.

Practice Learn You Try Write Real

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