"When I see young men doing so wonderfully well in athletics, I don't feel angry at them. I feel jealous of them. I wish that some of my boys in writing would do the same thing. ... You must have form — performance. The thing itself is indescribable, but it is felt like athletic form. To have form, feel form in sports — and by analogy feel form in verse. One works and waits for form in both. As I said, the person who spends his time criticizing the play around him will never write poetry. He will write criticism — for the New Republic."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Pulitzer Prize winnersPoets from the United States19th-century poets from the United StatesPoets from New HampshirePeople from San Francisco
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Originally delivered at a poetry reading at Princeton University (October 26, 1937), published in Collected Poems, Prose & Plays (1995)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Frost
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin clo…"
"Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subs…"
"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
"If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live …"
"Do you know, Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes ha…"
"The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil."
"Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. A le…"
"It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader…"
"A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attent…"
"We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? Do we know any better where we are, And how it stands between th…"