Skip to content

Poetry's only crucial attribute is rhythm. This is its heartbeat.This makes it memorable. If the rhythm falters , then the poem dies of heart failure.

— Michael Longley

Another quote →

Topics

Poetry

More quotes by Michael Longley

What good poetry and good prose have in common is vitality of rhythm .

By definition , if prose is a river, poetry is a fountain.

If I knew where poems come from . I'd go there.

All Michael Longley quotes →

You may also like

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Longley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.