Quotes by James Fenton

Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I dont, because I cant accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.

When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.

Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work.

A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval Carmina Burana - tends to be somewhat crude stuff in comparison with the classical verse that doesnt.

Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.

The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme.

The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins. And even today, in the prolonged aftermath of modernism, in places where open form or free verse is the orthodoxy, you will find a memory of that raising of the voice in the term heightened speech.

One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.

In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have trained or practised enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training.