"Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identify and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Robert Graves, in "The Case for Xanthippe" in The Crane Bag (1969).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Poetry
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Poetry
238 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Poetry →
Related Quotes
"The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth—truth conveyed to the understanding, not direc…"
"Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a win…"
"For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it."
"Musæo contigens cuncta lepore."
"Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good."
"We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age."
"Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives…"
"It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the a…"
"These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them…"
"Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before it was neither rhyme nor reason."