Quotes by James Fenton

James Fenton

“Love” is so short of perfect rhymes that convention allows half-rhymes like “move”. The alternative is a plague of doves, or a kind of poem in which the poet addresses his adored both as “love” and as “guv” – a perfectly decent solution once, but only once, in a while.

Love Is

Moving

Perfect

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.

Giving

Song

Voice

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.

Age

Doe

Latin

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.

Odes

Palaces

Rooms

A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living in a pensione on an allowance of £40 a month, which was princely. I did a lot of work and enjoyed myself immensely.

Happy Times

Interesting

Italian

Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most… are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so.

Believe

Reading

Regret

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.

Example

Ideas

Small Numbers

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.

Four

Hymns

Practice

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

Lines

Poetic

Relaxed

Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.

Baby

Poetry

Workshops

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Accidents

Accounts

Accusation

Aftermath

Age

Art

Baby

Beautiful

Believe

Book

Carrie

Cases

Century

Challenges

Children

Common

Country

Creative

Dark

Demand

Doe

Done

Drama

English Poetry

Enough

Epic

Example

Eye

Faces

Fall

Feelings

Firsts

Four

Giving

Great Poetry

Guru

Hands

Happened

Happy Times

Heroic

Humorous

Hymns

Ideas

Imitation

Interesting

Intricate

Iowa

Italian

Knows

Language

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Quotes by James Fenton

James Fenton

“Love” is so short of perfect rhymes that convention allows half-rhymes like “move”. The alternative is a plague of doves, or a kind of poem in which the poet addresses his adored both as “love” and as “guv” – a perfectly decent solution once, but only once, in a while.

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.

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.

A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living in a pensione on an allowance of £40 a month, which was princely. I did a lot of work and enjoyed myself immensely.

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.

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

Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.

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