Poetry Carries Its History Within

At Somewhere Around 10 Syllables, The English Poetic Line Is At Its Most Relaxed And Manageable.

I've Not Been A Prolific Poet, And It Always Seemed To Me To Be A Bad Idea To Feel That You Had To Produce In Order To Get... Credits. Production Of A Collection Of Poems Every Three Years Or Every Five Years, Or Whatever, Looks Good, On Paper. But It Might Not Be Good; It Might Be Writing On A Kind Of Automatic Pilot.

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.

When We Study Shakespeare On The Page, For Academic Purposes, We May Require All Kinds Of Help. Generally, We Read Him In Modern Spelling And With Modern Punctuation, And With Notes. But Any Poetry That Is Performed - From Song Lyric To Tragic Speech - Must Make Its Point, As It Were, Without Reference Back.

Nobody Really Knows Whether They Are A Poet. I Knew I Was Interested From The Age Of 15.