James Fenton
James Fenton
James Martin Fenton FRSL FRSAis an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 April 1949
art names quality
Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity could just as easily be a quality of metrical as of free verse.
transmission carrie
Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral.
writing faces problem
One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.
doe great-poetry intricate
Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.
lines single-line whole
I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.
morning reading writing
I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.
rap lows cases
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.
age poet knows
Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.
doe guru accidents
One does not become a guru by accident.
language modern english-poetry
English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English language extends.
needs revolutionary newspapers
Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, had a good point to make. With revolutionary music, any text can be set to work.
war simple feelings
My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.
writing iowa creative
Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing.
pain stressed doe
The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: 'lane' rhymes with 'pain,' but it also rhymes with 'urbane' since the last syllable of 'urbane' is stressed. 'Lane' does not rhyme with 'methane.'