“I don't believe in pure form. I don't believe in pure anything.”

An early rejection of abstraction that later shaped his plea for impure poetry · Letter, 25 September 1926

• Art
• Belief
• Form

“If war is the test of reality, then all poetry is unreal; but in that case unreality is a virtue.”

Written after the outbreak of war, defending both escapist and realist verse · Book, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats (1941)

• Poetry
• Reality
• War

“The poet is primarily a spokesman, making statements or incantations on behalf of himself or others — usually for both.”

Self and community are hard to separate in the act of speaking · Essay, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Community
• Poetry
• Voice

“The poet has no greater number of muscles than the ordinary conversationalist; he merely has more highly developed muscles and better coordination.”

Craft as training of a faculty everyone already possesses · Essay, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Craft
• Language
• Skill

“The poet is a specialist in something which everyone practises.”

Everyday speech already uses words poetically; the poet only does it more strictly · Essay, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Language
• Poetry
• Speech

“I think that the poet is only an extension — or, if you prefer it, a concentration — of the ordinary man.”

Rejecting the romantic gap between poet and common reader · Essay, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Humanity
• Individuality
• Poets

“Poetry must be honest even before it is beautiful.”

Honesty of subject comes before the ideal of pure beauty · Essay, Subject in Modern Poetry

• Beauty
• Honesty
• Poetry

“I would have a poet able-bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, susceptible to physical impressions.”

His portrait of the poet as a man of the world, not a recluse · Essay, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Humour
• Life
• Poets

“Others can tell lies more efficiently; no one except the poet can give us poetic truth.”

A defence of the poet's particular kind of honesty in a specialised world · Preface, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Honesty
• Poetry
• Truth

“The writer today should be not so much the mouthpiece of a community as its conscience, its critical faculty, its generous instinct.”

The poet should disturb what a public already knows, not echo it · Preface, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Community
• Conscience
• Writers

“The poet is a maker, not a retail trader.”

Against the slogan-poet who merely sells a ready-made message · Preface, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Craft
• Integrity
• Poetry

“The poet, I consider, is both critic and entertainer (and his criticism will cut no ice unless he entertains).”

Poetry must hold an audience if its judgement is to matter · Preface, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Criticism
• Pleasure
• Poetry

“This book is a plea for impure poetry, that is, for poetry conditioned by the poet's life and the world around him.”

His programme for a poetry answerable to ordinary life rather than to pure form · Preface, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (1938)

• Life
• Poetry
• Reality