When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life. John Drinkwater Read Quote
For while the subjects of poetry are few and recurrent, the moods of man are infinitely various and unstable. It is the same in all arts. John Drinkwater Read Quote
To take an analogy: if we say that a democratic government is the best kind of government, we mean that it most completely fulfills the highest function of a government – the realisation of the will of the people. John Drinkwater Read Quote
The poet’s perfect expression is the token of a perfect experience; what he says in the best possible way he has felt in the best possible way, that is, completely. John Drinkwater Read Quote
So it is in poetry. All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity; if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse. John Drinkwater Read Quote
Poe’s saying that a long poem is a sequence of short ones is perfectly just. John Drinkwater Read Quote
If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry. John Drinkwater Read Quote
To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential. John Drinkwater Read Quote
We recognise in the finished art, which is the result of these conditions, the best words in the best order – poetry; and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible. John Drinkwater Read Quote
A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being. John Drinkwater Read Quote
