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[M]ost of us are not good at appreciating the poetry of those appreciably younger than we are.

— Christopher Ricks The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999)

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Poetry

More quotes by Christopher Ricks

English poetry – having a life of its own – is forever being supplemented, complemented, culled, and found afresh. The anthologist had better not repine at the thought of his or her future departure.

The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999)

Inerrancy about one's own powers is not a mark of the Victorian poets, nor even is a simple prudence about not over-reaching or over-archaizing. The Victorian poetaster over 'weens'.

The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1987)

When a language creates – as it does – a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

The State of the Language (1980)

Any anthologist of the unparagoned achievement that is English poetry must enjoy the pleasure, privilege, and responsibility of being for a while the master of its ceremonies. Or of being, at any rate, in the rueful Americanism, kinda humble and kinda proud.

The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999)

[I]t is characteristic of true simplicity that there may radiate from its utmost directness a good many glinting things.

Dylan's Visions of Sin (2004)

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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

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