On Writing Poetry
Great subjects do not make great poems; usually, indeed, the reverse.
—English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama)
A THRILL LIKE MUSIC
Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you—almost apart from their meaning—a thrill like music?
Letter to Arthur Greeves, March 21, 1916 (CL 1)
THE METER AND THE MAGIC OF POETIC LANGUAGE
You are quite right when you talk about thinking more of the matter than of the form. All I meant when I talked about the importance of form was to carry a little further what you already feel in prose—that is how some phrases such as “the wall of the world,” or “at the back of the north wind” affect you, partly by sound, partly by association, more than the same meaning would if otherwise expressed. The only difference is that poetry makes use of that sort of feeling much more than prose and produces those effects by meter as well as by phrase. In fact, the meter and the magic of the words should be like the orchestration of a Wagnerian opera—should sort of fill the matter by expressing things that can’t be directly told—that is, it expresses feeling while the matter expresses thought.
Letter to Arthur Greeves, July 11, 1916 (CL 1)
POETRY FOR THE LIPS AS WELL AS THE EYES
By the way, I most fully agree with you about “the lips being invited to share the banquet” in poetry, and always “mouth” it while I read, though not in a way that would be audible to other people in the room. (Hence the excellent habit which I once formed, but have since lost, of not smoking while reading a poem.) I look upon this “mouthing” as an infallible mark of those who really like poetry. Depend upon it, the man who reads verses in any other way, is after “noble thoughts” or “philosophy” (in the revolting sense given to that word by Browning societies and Aunt Lily) or social history, or something of the kind, not poetry.
Letter to his brother, Warren Lewis, April 8, 1932 (CL 2)
JOHN SKELTON’S PERFECTION IN LIGHT POETRY
[Skelton’s] “Philip Sparrow” is our first great poem of childhood . . . . It is indeed the lightest—the most like a bubble—of all the poems I know. It would break at a touch: but hold your breath, watch it, and it is almost perfect. The Skeltonics are essential to its perfection. Their prattling and hopping and their inconsequence, so birdlike and so childlike, are the best possible embodiment of the theme. We should not, I think, refuse to call this poem great; perfection in light poetry, perfect smallness, is among the rarest of literary achievements.
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama)
POETRY AS AN INCARNATION OF THOUGHT
It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.
Reflections on the Psalms
POETRY AS A MODE OF WRITING
When what the poet is saying is religious, poetry is simply a part of religion. When what he says is simply entertaining, poetry is a form of entertainment. When what he says is wicked, poetry is simply a form of sin. Whenever one is talking, if one begins to utilize rhythm, metaphor, association, etc., one is beginning to use “poetry”: but the whole place of that poetry in the scheme of things depends on what you are talking about. In fact, in a sense there is no such thing as poetry. It is not an element but a mode.
Letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, July 28, 1936 (CL 2)
ON POLITICAL POETRY
The real parallel to much modern political poetry is not religious poetry concerned with God or the Passion or Heaven but merely pious poetry concerned with (ugh!) “religion.” The religion of politics is a religion without sacraments: for the human sacrifices which it practices are mere murder, not even ritual murder. Wordsworth compensated for the (poetically) ghostlike nature of politics by using a strict form, the sonnet. But that matter, with vers libre [free verse] as the form, is to me quite unpardonable: a noisy vacuity.
Letter to Chad Walsh, October 20, 1950 (CL 3)