John Hollander Quotes

The blueprints of verse can be used to build things made of literal, or nonpoetic material, which is why most verse is not poetry.

A teacher (of poetry) has to know and feel what poetry is , and be able - and this is crucial- to read it aloud effectively.

Poetic form, as we know it, is an abstraction from, or residue of musical form.... The ghost of oral poetry never vanishes...all poetry was originally oral.

The large (in English) unphilosophical, 'poetic' or 'religious' questions are elicited from their precise and technical microcosms.

Central also to reading verse aloud is the handling of enjambment, ..the interplay of line-end and sentence-flow.

For the poet, the biblical sense of 'know' is as much part of nature as the heat of fire, and in the cognative sense as much a given phenomonen as the brightness itself.

Contrastive stress is very important in English, as poems are full of invisible italicised contrasts of this kind.

Not being a philosopher I've had to work through my feelings and puzzlements in poems.

You can teach the writing of verse..like prose..an instrument..and the recognition of true poetry. The rest, writers must teach themselves.

The warfare between poetry and philosophy certainly started with Plato, who was both poet and philosopher.

'Poetic form' is a very deep matter that covers much more than phonological or typological pattern.

Winter wields only the spades, Summer brandishes
Hot, black clubs, Spring shower hearts about and Autumn shows
A fall of diamonds in our climate of extremes

We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could No more walks in the wood

I revise very little. I always write in long hand and revise when I type. I test them out when I read them aloud.

Poetry may be written on paper, but it’s an oral art.A good poem satisfies the ear .It creates a story or picture that grabs you.