The Mormon mission to Africa, as to other dark-skinned parts of the world, was for a long time hobbled by the racism of the movement’s scripture. James Fenton Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I don’t see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem. James Fenton Read Quote
At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable. James Fenton Read Quote
For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on the other. The choice is between the nullity and vanity of our first efforts, and the developing of a sense of idiom, form, structure, metre, rhythm, line – all the fundamental characteristics of this verbal art. James Fenton Read Quote
There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet. But the thing you must try to write, when you do so, is a real sonnet, and not a practice sonnet. James Fenton Read Quote
Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15. James Fenton Read Quote
I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon. James Fenton Read Quote
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. James Fenton Read Quote
