“No future historian of the United States will be able to use quotations from her twentieth-century poets in support of an imperial policy of conquest and slaughter.” Rejecting the idea that poetry should ever be enlisted to justify war and empire · Essay (as commonly attributed) Poetry War
“This is not, as Mr. Sandburg suggests, library poetry; it is pioneer poetry, with the breath of the wilderness in it.” Praising poetry rooted in direct experience of landscape and frontier life · Review, Tall Timber and a Loon Nature Poetry
“Indian symbolism, with the image as employed by the Indian, is to my mind the most fruitful and translatable contribution that Indian poetry can make to our own.” Identifying concrete symbolism as a particularly powerful source of poetic exchange · Review, Tall Timber and a Loon Art Poetry
“It is extremely difficult for the trained musician to catch the intervals of Indian music, both in pitch and time.” Recognising the difficulty of translating one musical tradition into another · Review, Tall Timber and a Loon Art Music
“There are two ways of expressing what we may call an Indian inspiration. One is to use the Indian's own method—to get within.” Distinguishing inward imaginative identification from external description · Review, Tall Timber and a Loon Art Poetry
“The best of Owen's poems are far indeed from this; and that is their virtue.” Praising Wilfred Owen for escaping the sensational treatment of warfare · Review, The Poet of the War Poetry War
“Neither are we, I have sometimes thought, worth their stark tragedies, or these trench paradoxes which furnish incidents for the poetic cinema.” Questioning the transformation of soldiers' suffering into literary spectacle · Review, The Poet of the War Art Death War
“There you have the deep personal experience and revelation which is the only sort of propaganda, and one might say of poetry, that counts.” Valuing personal revelation above rhetorical argument in poetry · Review, The Poet of the War Poetry Truth War
“The result, so far as propaganda against war is concerned, is quite the opposite of the effect intended.” Warning that powerful imagery may produce consequences contrary to intention · Review, The Poet of the War Truth War
“For the fact is, they represent war as adventure.” Noting how artistic representation can undermine an intended anti-war message · Review, The Poet of the War Art War
“The trouble with these poems, if one considers them as propaganda, is that they do not propagandize.” Distinguishing the actual emotional effect of poetry from its declared purpose · Review, The Poet of the War Poetry War
“But just one thing is needed from Miss Pound's opponents to prove her theory a house of cards, and that is some evidence of a crowd or group improvisation of the ballads.” Demanding evidence rather than received assumptions in literary scholarship · Review, Who Writes Folk-songs? Poetry Truth
“The professor of folk-song, like the melancholy cowboy, will have to go.” A characteristically dry conclusion to her criticism of rigid folk-song theory · Review, Who Writes Folk-songs? Art Poetry
“If all the arbitrary barbed-wire fences of the folk-lorists are heeded, what will be left of the open range of folk-song?” Using frontier imagery to mock unnecessarily restrictive scholarship · Review, Who Writes Folk-songs? Poetry Truth
“If printed sources are not allowed, then all the old ballads collected in broadsides or chap-books must go.” Showing how strict theories can exclude traditions they are intended to explain · Review, Who Writes Folk-songs? Memory Poetry
“If known authorship discounts the term folk-poetry, then the poetry of the American Indian is not folk-poetry.” Testing scholarly definitions against inconvenient examples · Review, Who Writes Folk-songs? Poetry Truth
“On this score one would have to call many of Burns' poems mere derelicts, and discard with them as well a large body of accepted folk-songs.” Questioning definitions of folk poetry that are too rigid to match literary history · Review, Who Writes Folk-songs? Poetry Truth
“Railroads and aeroplanes move too swiftly to allow a slow, secluded maturing such as the older folk-songs had.” Recognising how technological change alters the growth of oral tradition · Review, Mr. Lomax's Second Anthology Poetry Time
“He carries the same terminology into his courtship songs, and thereby creates a new idiom.” Observing how everyday language can generate a distinctive poetic voice · Review, Mr. Lomax's Second Anthology Love Poetry
“Manifestly it would be a mistake to ignore either, as it is a mistake to emphasize one at the expense of the other.” Advocating balance between different strands of cultural inheritance · Essay, The Folk Poetry of These States Art Truth
“Our roots are double.” Condensing her argument for both inherited and native cultural traditions · Essay, The Folk Poetry of These States Memory Poetry
“The poet who fails to perceive this is losing half his heritage.” Warning poets against neglecting the traditions surrounding them · Essay, The Folk Poetry of These States Memory Poetry
“All these furnish native folk-nutriment for our poetic soil.” Describing diverse traditions as nourishment for new poetry · Essay, The Folk Poetry of These States Art Poetry
“Contact itself will break down such arbitrary barriers.” Expressing confidence in direct human and cultural encounter · Essay, The Folk Poetry of These States Hope Truth
