John Drinkwater Quotes

English - Poet | June 1, 1882 - March 25, 1937

When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life.

John Drinkwater

LifePerfectPoetWordHeSelection

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

John Drinkwater

GreatMenManGreatnessGreat Man

A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

John Drinkwater

PoetryTruePersonalEmotionReal

Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them.

John Drinkwater

WorkPoetryEnergyLongDramaWhole

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

John Drinkwater

ArtWordsPoetrySongConnection

For while the subjects of poetry are few and recurrent, the moods of man are infinitely various and unstable. It is the same in all arts.

John Drinkwater

ManPoetrySameArtsMoodsUnstable

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

John Drinkwater

ValuePoetryImperfectWordExternal

It is commonly asserted and accepted that Paradise Lost is among the two or three greatest English poems; it may justly be taken as the type of supreme poetic achievement in our literature.

John Drinkwater

AchievementLiteratureParadiseThree

It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.

John Drinkwater

PoetryHereShouldFormTakesVerse

Poe's saying that a long poem is a sequence of short ones is perfectly just.

John Drinkwater

SayingShortLongPoemJustPoe

Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

John Drinkwater

LifeExperienceMenPoetryDesire

Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

John Drinkwater

CommunicationWordsPoetryWayOther

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