KeenBrain
KeenBrain
KeenBrain

James Fenton Quotes


Share this page on

Quotes by James Fenton

Showing 11-20 of 55 Quotes by James Fenton

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.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


A cabaret song has got to be written - for the middle voice, ideally - because you've got to hear the wit of the words. And a cabaret song gives the singer room to act, more even than an opera singer.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


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 Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


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.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral. Its transmission today is still in part oral, because we become acquainted with poetry through nursery rhymes, which we hear before we can read.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Working alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum of technology, and can be published, in most cases, quite cheaply.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


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.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


In song the same rule applies as in dramatic verse: the meaning must yield itself, or yield itself sufficiently to arouse the attention and interest, in real time.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Sometimes I have thought that a song should look disappointing on the page - a little thin, perhaps, a little repetitive, or a little on the obvious side, or a mixture of all of these things.

~James Fenton

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Poet

Born: April 25th, 1949

Links

Find James Fenton on Amazon

Related Authors

Lascelles Abercrombie
Samuel Butler
Lord Byron
John Donne
George Herbert
James Montgomery
Christina Rossetti
Edith Sitwell

Popular Authors

Edmund Burke Cesar Chavez Dwight D. Eisenhower Henry Ford St. Jerome John Mulaney Socrates H. G. Wells

Change your beliefs...change your life.

Get a related quote or insight every day.

(it's 100% free)

Follow Us On

Today's Birthdays

1770 - William Wordsworth

1648 - John Sheffield

1718 - Hugh Blair

1772 - Charles Fourier

1775 - Francis Cabot Lowell

1780 - William Ellery Channing

1873 - John Mcgraw

1874 - Frederick Carl Frieseke

1881 - Daisy Ashford

1889 - Gabriela Mistral

Birthdays on April 7th
All Birthdays

Popular Topics

Attitude Gardening God Humor Music Relationship Thankful Valentine's Day