Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.
The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.
A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats’s odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in a palace: one proceeds, with eager anticipation, from room to room.
Generally speaking, rhyme is the marker for the end of a line. The first rhyme-word is like a challenge thrown down, which the poem itself has to respond to.
Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work.
Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity could just as easily be a quality of metrical as of free verse.
The Mormon mission to Africa, as to other dark-skinned parts of the world, was for a long time hobbled by the racism of the movement’s scripture.
Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral.
English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends.
At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.
Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.
I don’t see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.
I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.
One does not become a guru by accident.