"Eloquence is the poetry of prose"
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Bryant is quietly staking a claim for prose at a moment when poetry still carried the cultural crown. Calling eloquence "the poetry of prose" flatters speech and essay into artistic legitimacy: not a lesser cousin of verse, but its sibling with different rules. The line works because it compresses an argument about craft into a neat act of reclassification. Eloquence is not just clarity or persuasion; it is prose behaving like art, borrowing poetry's concentration, music, and image-making without adopting its line breaks.
The subtext is a warning as much as a compliment. If eloquence is poetry, then it can intoxicate. It can seduce an audience into feeling coherence before they've tested the ideas. Bryant, a poet who also lived in the world of public letters and civic rhetoric (and in an America building its own literary identity), knew the double edge: the same techniques that elevate a sermon or editorial can also smuggle in sentimentality, moral certainty, even propaganda. Labeling eloquence as "poetry" hints at performance, selection, and shaping - the deliberate arrangement of language to produce an effect.
Context matters: Bryant belongs to a 19th-century culture that prized oratory and print persuasion. His phrase gives that culture a standard: prose earns its highest rank when it reaches poetry's density - when it doesn't just report the world, but composes it. In eight words, he elevates style from ornament to engine, implying that how we say something is part of what we believe it to be.
The subtext is a warning as much as a compliment. If eloquence is poetry, then it can intoxicate. It can seduce an audience into feeling coherence before they've tested the ideas. Bryant, a poet who also lived in the world of public letters and civic rhetoric (and in an America building its own literary identity), knew the double edge: the same techniques that elevate a sermon or editorial can also smuggle in sentimentality, moral certainty, even propaganda. Labeling eloquence as "poetry" hints at performance, selection, and shaping - the deliberate arrangement of language to produce an effect.
Context matters: Bryant belongs to a 19th-century culture that prized oratory and print persuasion. His phrase gives that culture a standard: prose earns its highest rank when it reaches poetry's density - when it doesn't just report the world, but composes it. In eight words, he elevates style from ornament to engine, implying that how we say something is part of what we believe it to be.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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