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James Fenton Quotes


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Quotes by James Fenton

Showing 31-40 of 55 Quotes by James Fenton

A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval 'Carmina Burana' - tends to be somewhat crude stuff in comparison with the classical verse that doesn't.

~James Fenton

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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.

~James Fenton

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Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.

~James Fenton

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This is what rhyme does. In a couplet, the first rhyme is like a question to which the second rhyme is an answer. The first rhyme leaves something in the air, some unanswered business. In most quatrains, space is created between the rhyme that poses the question and the rhyme that gives the answer - it is like a pleasure deferred.

~James Fenton

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No poet is required to write in stanzas, or indeed in regular forms at all. Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode' has a rhyme scheme and sequence of long and short lines that goes without regular pattern, following the mood and whim of the poet. Such a form is known as an irregular ode.

~James Fenton

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The Italian word 'stanza' means 'a room', and a room is a good way to conceive of a stanza. A room, generally speaking, is sufficient for its own purposes, but it does not constitute a house. A stanza has the same sense of containment, without being complete or independent.

~James Fenton

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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.

~James Fenton

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I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.

~James Fenton

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At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.

~James Fenton

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At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.

~James Fenton

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Poet

Born: April 25th, 1949

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