"France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic"
- Charles Baudelaire
About this Quote
This quote by Charles Baudelaire is a commentary on the French perspective in the direction of poetry. He recommends that France has a "hereditary scary of verse" which they choose authors who make use of knowledgeable in a much more prosaic fashion. This can be interpreted as a criticism of the French for not embracing poetry as a form of expression. Baudelaire's quote indicates that the French are not open to the elegance and also feeling that can be found in verse, and rather prefer authors who utilize verse in a more uncomplicated and also literal method. This could be viewed as a reflection of the French culture, which is usually viewed as more formal and also structured than various other societies. Baudelaire's quote is a suggestion that poetry can be a powerful form of expression, and that it needs to be welcomed and appreciated by all societies.
"We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry"
"Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going"
"I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that"