“He was a master of both prose and verse... his prose better than his verse, as mine is.”

Dowson comparing himself with Poe and reiterating his preference for his own prose · Conversation with Frank Harris, as recalled by Harris

• Criticism
• Poetry
• Writing

“Poetry, when it came, was an outburst, a digression.”

Capturing Dowson's sense that poetry arrived spontaneously rather than through deliberate literary planning · Conversation recalled by W. R. Thomas

• Creativity
• Poetry
• Writing

“I have always had, alas, too much of that swift, disastrous & suicidal energy which destroyed our dear & incomparable Verlaine.”

Dowson recognising in himself something of the destructive intensity he associated with Verlaine · Letter to Arthur Symons, 5 July 1896

• Character
• Influence
• Struggle