#poets

... While much recent historicist criticism has assumed early nineteenth-century readers attuned to subtle ideological nuances in poetry, actual responses from readers often come closer to clulessness. ... It is no surprise that no one understood Blake, but other poets fared not much better. ... Coleridge's 'Christabel' was 'the standing enigma which puzzles the curiosity of literary circles. What is it all about?', while another reviewer asked about Shelley, 'What, in the name of wonder on one side, and of common sense on the other, is the meaning of this metaphysical rhapsody about the unbinding of Prometheus?'. Even Keats was condemned for 'his frequent obscurity and confusion of language' and his 'unintelligible quaintness'. Byron, never to be outdone, boasted in 'Don Juan' that not only did he not understand many of his fellow poets, he did not understand himself either: 'I don't pretend that I quite understand / My own meaning when I would be very fine.' ... ↗

— Andrew Elfenbein

#incomprehensible #poetry #romantic-poets #romantic

How many unuttered words died in the heads of those for whom a word was too expensive. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#expensive #heads #literature #literature-quotes #philosophy

Do not look too far for you will see nothing. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #nothing #philosophy

Teaching others, he corrected himself. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#correction #corrections #dejan-stojanovic #himself #literature

The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. ↗

— David Antin

#always #ancient #anxiety #began #deficiencies

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table. ↗

— Paul Auster

#bread #contemporary #earn #food #french

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#artistic #communities #creation #individual #mind

Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance. ↗

— Jean Anouilh

#give #importance #inspiration #invented #poets

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. ↗

— Thomas Aquinas

#arises #awe #because #being #big

Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#entitles #experience #indispensable #love #love is