Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work. James Fenton Read Quote
Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity could just as easily be a quality of metrical as of free verse. James Fenton Read Quote
Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of elitism, mandarinism. Open form was like common ground on which all might graze their cattle – it was not to be closed in by usurping landlords. James Fenton Read Quote
Metrics are not a device for restraining the mad, any more than ‘open form’ or free verse is a prairie where a man can do all kinds of manly things in a state of wholesome unrestrictedness. James Fenton Read Quote
Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty. James Fenton Read Quote
Generally speaking, rhyme is the marker for the end of a line. The first rhyme-word is like a challenge thrown down, which the poem itself has to respond to. James Fenton Read Quote
Rhyme is a mnemonic device, an aid to the memory. And some poems are themselves mnemonics, that is to say, the whole purpose of the poem is to enable us to remember some information. James Fenton Read Quote
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. James Fenton Read Quote
Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done. James Fenton Read Quote
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 Read Quote
