Top 15 Vernon Scannell Quotes

The proper act of reading of a poem was not an act of passive submission but one of collaboration with its author.

I was the living proof of T. S Eliot's assertion that poetry can communicate before it is understood.the conscious,analytical part of my response was lulled into a kind of stupor by the rhythms and richness of the imagery of the poetry I was reading.

The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear .The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.

I hope this book will throw a little light on the nature of human coutage and its lack..when the last argument of kings viz cannon or war pursues its loud & murderous course.

I would say that my aims of writing this book are less concerned with the facts of history than with the truth of art.

The intellect had rejected the rational basis of belief, yet the imagination & sensibility yearn for simple faith.

Of my childhood & youth the greater part of which had been spent in an atmosphere of cultural twilight.

The impulse to create is pure, self sufficient, its own reward or punishment.

The desire of a poet for his writings to be in print is as natural as a painter needs to exhibit his work in public.

The genuinely innovatory , the truly 'experiential' poetry is always firmly rooted in the achievement of the past.

The word experiment derives from 'experimentum' - that which has been experienced and what , for the writer , has been experienced is the work of his great predecessors

Whether we are writing prose or verse we must never use language in a merely decorative way, every qualifying word, every adjective and adverb must be carefully inspected & weighed before it is used and ask before its use , is it really necessary.

A word or a phrase or a line is not a poem. A poem is the exploration and shaping of an experience. A real poem demands intelligence, imagination, passion, understanding, experience and not least a knowledge of the craft.

It is impossible for a poet to fashion the voice deliberately by contrivance and experiment; it could not be discovered or simulated through the cultivation of an eccentric diction or prosody, or by the employment of regional speech rhythms and patterns.

The poet's need to try to find his own voice , a recognizable individual voice that carries the signature of his voice in almost every line . . . the unique tone being the consequence of the poet's rigorous search for truth ( his truth(, his absolute fidelity to the nature of the experience he was exploring.