“I believe in freedom regardless of form.”

Separates liberty in the poem from any particular verse shape · Note on poetry, 1937

• Form
• Freedom
• Poetry

“The great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of earth remains to be written.”

Turns the unfinished task of poetry toward this world · Essay, The Necessary Angel

• Earth
• Imagination
• Poetry

“Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.”

Treats style as the thing itself rather than an ornament laid on · Essay, Two or Three Ideas

• Character
• Poetry
• Style

“After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.”

Names poetry as what remains when religious belief has gone · Notebook, Sur Plusieurs Beaux Sujets

• Belief
• God
• Poetry

“Poetry is a purging of the world's poverty and change and evil and death. It is a present perfecting, a satisfaction in the irremediable poverty of life.”

Offers poetry as a momentary completion inside an unfinished world · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

• Poetry
• Poverty
• Satisfaction

“A poem should be a part of one's sense of life.”

Asks that poetry belong to living rather than sit apart from it · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

• Feeling
• Life
• Poetry

“Poetry is a search for the inexplicable.”

Defines the art by what it cannot finish explaining · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

• Mystery
• Poetry
• Search

“All poetry is experimental poetry.”

Makes experiment the ordinary condition of the art, not a school · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

• Craft
• Originality
• Poetry

“The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.”

A compact figure for turning raw life into finished art · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

• Craft
• Poetry
• Transformation

“One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.”

A refusal to treat novelty as a vocation · Letter, as commonly cited

• Modernity
• Poetry
• Purpose

“Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.”

Treats difficulty as the condition that keeps life and art from becoming dull · Letter, 19 December 1935

• Complexity
• Life
• Poetry

“It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts.”

Rejecting posterity as the sole test of a poem's worth · The Forms of Poetry, 1926

• Judgement
• Poetry
• Posterity

“What most of us don't realize is that everyone loves poetry.”

Defending poetry as a popular pleasure, not a highbrow specialty · Interview remark, reported in the Washington Post

• Pleasure
• Poetry
• Readers

“Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable.”

A compact definition of poetry as memorable speech for what cannot otherwise be fixed · The Pursuit of Poetry, 1969

• Definition
• Memory
• Poetry

“The old man has done a bit of rhyming in his time too pointed to be printed.”

Affectionate pride in a family gift for satire too sharp for the press · Comment on his father Peter Murray's verses

• Family
• Poetry
• Satire

“I was raised upon Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns, and the old Scots, and all my life as a boy I was taught to look out for quaint phrases, out of the way expressions, and to study and delight in the old, original characters of the countryside.”

How a Doric childhood and the Scots canon trained his ear for speech and character · Recollection, 1912

• Childhood
• Language
• Poetry

“Haiku ought to create a unison of the external beauties of nature and the subtleties of the human soul.”

Defining short Japanese verse as nature joined to soul · Writings on Japanese poetry

• Nature
• Poetry
• Soul

“A Japanese poet simply depicts a crow sitting on a withered branch, and leaves it to the reader to complete the poetic thought.”

Describing suggestion as the Japanese lyric method · Essay on Japanese poetry

• Poetry
• Readers
• Suggestion

“Like the composers of the day I believe not in the old ideals but in new methods of expression.”

Aligning verse with modernist experiment · Instead of a Preface, My Rubaiyat

• Innovation
• Modernity
• Poetry

“A poem of the scope and range of My Rubaiyat is never complete.”

Treating a long poem as a living, unfinished form · Instead of a Preface, My Rubaiyat

• Imperfection
• Poetry
• Process

“To make rhymeless lines read like a poem is the most laborious task a songsmith can set himself.”

Defending technical difficulty as artistic choice · Instead of a Preface, My Rubaiyat

• Craft
• Poetry
• Writing

“I will drop the mask and tell you the secret of my verses. You say they impress you as being uneven and unfinished. I heartily agree with you.”

Openly owning incompleteness as part of the work · Instead of a Preface, My Rubaiyat

• Honesty
• Poetry
• Writing

“It resteth nowe (gentle reder) that thou thinke it not evill doon, to publish, to the honor of the Englishe tong, and for profit of the studious of Englishe eloquence, those workes which the vngentle horders vp of such treasure have heretofore envied thee.”

Justifying print as public service against private hoarding of courtly verse · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Freedom
• Poetry
• Readers

“That our tong is able in that kynde to do as praiseworthely as the rest, the honorable stile of the noble earle of Surrey, and the weightinesse of the depewitted sir Thomas Wyat the elders verse, with severall graces in sondry good Englishe writers, doe show abundantly.”

Claiming English as equal to Latin and Italian for lyric eloquence · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• England
• Language
• Poetry