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Quote by Laura Riding

“Polygamy and polyandry distribute the frightening physical solidarity of monogamy. Monogamous couples are always hungry for company: to dilute sex.”

Quote by Laura Riding

Author

Laura Riding, an influential American poet, was born on January 16, 1901, and passed away on September 2, 1991. Her poetry is known for its unique style and profound emotional expression, considered a significant voice in 20th-century American poetry. more

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“Pseudo-modernists pursue individual style because they know they cannot make a name without it; but if they had lived in the eighteenth century their sole object would have been to write correctly, to conform to the manner of the period. In practice, their conforming individualism means an imitation, studiously concealed, of the eccentricities of poems which really are individual.”

Ifs Knows Writing Mean Has Beens Names Individual Practice Century Style Objects Periods Pursue Individualism Sole Imitation Conform Concealed Eccentricity Pseudo Individual Style

Author:Laura Riding

“When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation. Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame.”

Thinking Should May Long Left Term Pieces Stage Poet Reader Fame Ten Critics Following Stealing Temples Pounds Orthodox Justification Long Ago Shrinks Posterity Condemnation Charlatans

Author:Laura Riding

“Shakespeare alternated between musical surrenders to social prestige and magnificent fits of poetic remorse.”

Social Fit Musical Surrender Poetic Magnificent Remorse Prestige

Author:Laura Riding

“All literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express themselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the old how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents.”

Writing May Young Turns Literature Teach Written Precocious

Author:Laura Riding

“Woman is the symbol to man of the uncleanness of bodily existence, of which he purifies himself by putting her to noble uses. She thus has for him a double, contradictory significance; she is the subject of his bawdry and the subject of his romance.”

Men Use Romance Existence Subjects Noble Symbols Significance Contradictory

Author:Laura Riding

“The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service.”

Writing Kind Two Different Parent Military Son Poet Europe Reactions Different Kinds Protective Distortion Anthology Compulsory Military Service

Author:Laura Riding

“Daisy was a consciously happy young woman without any of the usual endowments that make for conscious happiness, money apart. She was not pretty, she was not clever, she had no friends, no talents, nor even an imagination to make her think she was happy when she was really miserable. As she was never miserable, she had no need of an imagination.”

Thinking Needs Young Imagination Talent Conscious Clever Miserable Usual Young Women Daisies No Friends Endowment Not Pretty

Author:Laura Riding

“She [Venison] had never travelled and so could invent all kinds of strange places without being limited, as travelled people are, by knowledge of certain places only.”

People Kind Certain Strange All Kinds Strange Places Venison

Author:Laura Riding

“The terms 'male' and 'female' must be understood as representing no mere primitive opposition of sex to sex; but as defining two worlds of differing quality, in either of which men and women may jointly move and live.”

Men World May Two Moving Sex Term Quality Understood Men And Women Female Males Opposition Primitive Defining Representing Two Worlds

Author:Laura Riding

“What second love could she [Olympias] make out of her ruined first love? The second love that most women make out of their first love for husbands grows from a mutual and tacit sadness in both husband and wife that he is only in rare moments the man both would like him to be.”

Men Firsts Moments Grows Wife Sadness He Man Husband Mutual First Love Ruined Husband And Wife Make Out Tacit Rare Moments

Author:Laura Riding