“It is not from rules, or by cold-blooded imitation of style, that we learn to write: we learn by imitation indeed, but by a deeper imitation than is achieved by analysis of style.”

Describing literary influence as absorption rather than mechanical copying · Essay, The Music of Poetry

• Art
• Poetry

“The people which ceases to care for its literary inheritance becomes barbaric; the people which ceases to produce literature ceases to move in thought and sensibility.”

Presenting living literature as essential to cultural memory and development · Essay, The Social Function of Poetry

• Art
• Memory
• Poetry

“The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.”

Describing the demands modern experience places upon poetic language · Essay, The Metaphysical Poets

• Art
• Poetry