"The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly..." - Quote by Walt Whitman
The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.
More by Walt Whitman
“I accept reality and dare not question it.”
“Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that isGood steadily hastening towards immortality,And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.”
“The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.”
More on Poetry
“When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.”
“A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." - W. H. Auden"A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness...It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”
“The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates.”
More on Art
“It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.”
“Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.”
“Poetry is play. I'd even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football.”