Poems must taste just as bitter in poetasters' mouths much as in Plato's view of the poet's role in the republic...

Unquotable quotes: Poets, Poetasters and Platos – XXXVI

For James McAuley – in remembrance of a memorable week in Cardiff 1965

The greatest poet ever is NOT Homer, Lao Tse, Ovid, Dante, Chittalaic Chattanar, NOT Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Tulsi Das, Archipreste de Hita, NOT Goethe, Pushkin, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Quevedo, NOT Shelley, Keats, Gongora, Rimbaud, Yeats, Pound or Eliot, BUT as you all already must know: Ern MALLEY, for he draws on a thousand surrealist tongues. To be even greater, just emulate his creators!

The difference between a poet and a prosateur is that the latter is honour-bound – at the risk of exposure – to master grammar while the former is granted the licence to invent his own by those who cannot tell the difference.

The real reason why poets continue to dish out what they write is that no one expects them to be intelligible, much less by those who put their work out.

The less a poet appears rational in his creations, the more he’ll be praised by those who do not or cannot understand his work, for they will read whatever they want into his work to conceal their own lack of comprehension.

The great thing about being a poet is that you can say the same thing a million times over and over again and no one will mind, so long as you are less coherent every time you repeat yourself.

If a poet understood or mastered the craft of poetry, he would still be composing the first canto of his epic at the end of his life.

In other words, the poem is the shortest cut to the epic highway leading back to the first steps of the poetic phantasy which is the fine art of lisping with words without aim.

This is why he who has never died alive cannot know the soul of the poet.

No poem says nothing.

Each word in a poem alters the meaning, if any, of a poem. The more the words, the greater the risk of deranging the sense, unless you really mean what you mean and not just let words mean what they mean anyway.

Poets are born, not made, says the critic who is weary of reading more than he can take.

Poets are born and made, says the poet who takes the trouble to read.

Poets are neither born nor made, says the mad poet drunk with the sound of words.

A poet who conveys exactly what he wants to say in a poem is a mathematical genius who has cracked the riddle of the poem and is eager to record his findings in an equation which he is convinced is a poem.

A poem is like a person you meet for the first time: the more you get to know him, the less you might think of him – unless you remember while you talk to him (or read the poem again) what others who know him better than you have said of him.

The most successful poems are those which like some (wo)men bend backwards to reveal every nook and crotch as long and as longingly as you want them to.

Poems that taste good to the tongue reek often of bad breath and gums.

A poem out-of-shape spilling out of the page is best read in the dark.

A hot poem makes you sweat with joy.

A poem which tickles your fancy is best read in the pantry.

A poem that cannot stop giggling in bed ought to be pilloried and bled.

A not tragically-inclined poem should be read post coitum when omne animal triste est sive…..

Poems never die, only unpublished poets.

Proverbs are poems distilled by the illiterate masses over the ages.

Didactic poetry is the constant attempt to achieve proverbial status.

Even an anthropologically lost or isolated tribe is survived by its sayings, jingles and rhymes.

No great wealth or dominion, no nation, country or civilization can occupy the summits of glory if its heart is empty or even half-empty of poetry.

The human soul is entirely made up of poetry which is when it entirely stops being human.

Every people’s greatest pride is their greatest poets, more than founding fathers or conquering victorious generals who spoke poetry to their wards and soldiers.

The gods people invoke to soothe their woes make them wax poetic.

The stuff of dreams is poetry turned to cash: stop dreaming and you end up among the poor mass.

Even a Cyrano de Bergerac nose turns into a Marlowe’s which launched a thousand ships through poetising with his love.

The Republic everywhere is in shambles due to a Plato’s hardened and un-poetic logic.

Abuse a poet, if you will, with common pedestrian pun, and he will return the kindness with sweet lilting rhyme and fun.

What poets love turn into pairs of lifelong doves.

Skip a meal a day and buy a book of poems every day: Dieu vous le rendra!

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016