Home / Quotes / Quote by I. A. Richards

Quote by I. A. Richards

“It is never what a poem says that matters, but what it is.”

Author

I. A. Richards, a British linguist, was born on February 26, 1893, and passed away on September 7, 1979. He made significant contributions to the fields of language teaching and literary criticism. more

“Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.”

Source: The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History

“A work of (whatever) art can be either 'received' or 'used'. ...'Using' is inferior to 'reception' because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it ... When the art in question is literature a complication arises, for to 'receive' significant words is always, in one sense, to 'use' them, to go through and beyond them to an imagined something which is not itself verbal.”

Ifs Doe Art Use Used Poetry Literature Our Lives Add Significant Arise Inferiors Complication Facilitate Reception

Author:C. S. Lewis

“Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry.”

Moments Poetry Literature Sound Prove Memorable Pounds Avoided Texture Eliot Memorable Moments

Book:Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014

Source: Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014

“One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him.”

Way Trying Poetry Literature Poet One Way Forty Rejecting Auden

Book:Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014

Source: Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014

“For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!").”

Joy Poetry Three Literature Bits Pleasure Objects Poetic Quarters Guessing Suppressing

Book:On Literature

Source: On Literature

“I work to loud music - hard-rock stuff like AC/DC, Guns 'n Roses, and Metallica have always been particular favorites - but for me the music is just another way of shutting the door.”

Way Hard Poetry Literature Stuff Doors Rocks Particular Music Is Gun Rose Loud Another Way Metallica Hard Rock Guns N Roses Loud Music

Book:On writing: a memoir of the craft

Source: On writing: a memoir of the craft

Quote by I. A. Richards

Author

You May Also Like