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.
James FentonRead
What I want, when I write a poem, is no more than this: that it be preserved in some published form so that, in principle, someone, somewhere, will be able to find it and read it. That is all I need, as a poet, and that is the beauty, the luxury of my position. My lyric is mine and remains mine. Nobody can ruin it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a poet's desire for their work to be preserved and accessible to readers.
In this quote, James Fenton highlights the intrinsic value of poetry and the poet's wish for their work to endure through publication. He conveys the sense of fulfillment that comes from knowing that, regardless of public reception, the poem remains a personal creation that cannot be diminished by others. This illustrates the beauty and autonomy of artistic expression.
Themes
PoetryPreservationArtExpressionCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a lecture about the importance of literary preservation.
More from James Fenton
All quotes →If you're writing a song, you have to write something that can be understood serially. When you're reading a poem that's written for the page, your eye can skip up and down. You can see the thing whole. But you're not going to see the thing whole in the song. You're going to hear it in series, and you can't skip back.
James FentonRead
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".
James FentonRead
In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practised' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.
James FentonRead
'What is this', and 'How is this done?' are the first two questions to ask of any work of art. The second question immediately illuminates the first, but it often doesn't get asked. Perhaps it sounds too technical. Perhaps it sounds pedestrian.
James FentonRead
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