Skip to content

J. V. Cunningham Quotes

1911–1985 United States

James Vincent Cunningham (August 23, 1911 – March 30, 1985) was an American poet, sometimes described as a neo-classicist or anti-modernist.

United States
20th-century poets
Academics
Critics
Educators

Random J. V. Cunningham quote

7 quotes

Poetry is what looks like poetry, what sounds like poetry. It is metrical composition.

This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.

Some Salt: Poems and Epigrams (1967)

An old dissembler who lived out his lie
Lies here as if he did not fear to die.

What is needed is a noticeable unnoticeable style,... a directness of speech that seems to one judging easily imitable, to one trying it nothing less so.

Grief restrains grief as dams torrential rain
And time grows fertile with extended pain

With an a natural affinity for the epigram genre, I am, so to speak, a short breathed man and have an almost unthoughtout preference for brief definitive statements.

Despise me not
And not be queasy
To praise somewhat
Verse is not easy

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: J. V. Cunningham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.