Which one of us has not dreamed, on ambitious days, of the miracle of a poetic prose: musical, without rhythm or rhyme; adaptable enough and discordant enough to conform to the lyrical movements of the soul, the waves of revery, the jolts of consciousness?<p>Above all else, it is residence in the teeming cities, it is the crossroads of numberless relations that gives birth to this obsessional ideal.

Quel est celui de nous qui n'a pas, dans ses jours d'ambition, rêvé le miracle d'une prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience? C'est surtout de la fréquentation des villes énormes, c'est du croisement de leurs innombrables rapports que naît cet idéal obsédant.

The music I desire must be supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical effusions of the soul and the fantasy of dreams.

What good poetry and good prose have in common is vitality of rhythm .

Poetry searches for music amidst the tumult of the dictionary.

If the sameness and difference of America were to become musical, it would be poetry.

Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.

Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.

Poetry is a magic of pauses ... not a thing of tunes, but of heightened consciousness.

The poem, a harmonious flow of nuances, demands a musical rhythm, Vers libre.

Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master hand alone can reach.

Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle.

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

A certain ambiguity of rhythm is one of the beauties of a poem