Lord Chesterfield's Advice to His Son

        Your figure is a good one.  You have no natural defects in

the organs of your speech.  Your address may be engaging and

your manner of speaking graceful, if you will.  So, that if

they are not so, neither I, nor the world, can attribute it to

anything but your lack of parts.  Words were given us to

communicate our ideas by, and there must be something incon-

ceivably absurd in uttering them in such a manner that people

cannot understand them, or will not desire to understand them.

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LewSarett

                "A poem is a monuement to a moment of insight."

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BabetteDeutsch

                "Poetry is the fiery index to the genius of the age."

 

 

Quotations from BabetteDeutsch in "This Modern Poetry"

 

 

(1)    Contemporary verse is not greater than the verse of the past.

Each has its own peculiar virtues and special beauties.  Modern

verse, while it may not be better than the old, is better for

us because it iterprets in a living language, a living world,

and from that vantage point looks into the dark abyss of the

uncreated.

 

 

(2) Science and Poetry.

Science seeks to improve the conditions of living.  Poetry

Which speaks to the quickest understanding with the authority

of the deepest self, is still, as it always has been, the

delight of heroic minds.

             The scientist erects hypotheses which enable man

to weigh and measure the physical universe and to abstract

laws which will prosper him in his conflicts with his environ-

ment, his fellows and himself.

             Poetry communicates the emotions of these men in these

Conflicts and in their resolution.  It is, however, no less

than science purposive, practical and precise.

             The purpose of science is to reduce the evils of

life and to develop the goods it offers.  The purpose of the

poet is to give quality to living, and so to help man to

realize the world both inner and outer, more fully.

 

 

(3)  The effect of poetry on an audience.

Only indirectly, only gradually, can a great poem work on a

growing audience to create new ways of felling and changed

modes of behavior.  But without effecting any change it still

pleases by its intrinsic felicity.  It is like the sun whose

quickening powers are no less active because they may be

ignored by the man whose body it warms and whose eye it kindles.

(4)  Poetry is the stimulus to the good life; it is an element

of the good life.

(5)  Poetry is rooted in emotion, fed upon fact and shaped

by imagination.

(6)  Poetry seeks a hold upon reality, and the closeness of its

approach is the test of its success.  It has its roots in our

savage past and so speaks to the oldest instincts of man.  But

also it communicates the experience of those whose imaginative

faculty makes them the sensitive antennae of the race.

RobertP.T.Coffin:--The speaking of poetry existed thousands

of years before there was a written word.  It is said that the

old kings realized its importance--that a king would rather

give up his salt than go without his gleemen.

Poetry is not the caviar or loives at the feast of life.

It is the solid center--the heart, the bread, the meat at the

banquet of life.

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