Phrase by 'James Fenton'

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Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Friends , Creative , Tradition , No Friends


Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of elitism, mandarinism. Open form was like common ground on which all might graze their cattle - it was not to be closed in by usurping landlords.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Always , Like , Freedom , Free


The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Back , Mother , Herself , Spell


An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  You , Time , Beauty , Intelligence


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.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Name , Poetry , Free , Quality


The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins. And even today, in the prolonged aftermath of modernism, in places where 'open form' or free verse is the orthodoxy, you will find a memory of that raising of the voice in the term 'heightened speech.'

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  You , Poetry , Today , Memory


When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Song , Back , Poetry , Speech


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.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Sense , Done , Fine , Realistic


One does not become a guru by accident.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Become , Does , Accident , Guru


My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.

Author: James Fenton - British Poet
  Love , Simple , War , Death


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