Daily Inspiration Quote by Joseph Roux

Roux, a clergyman, gives poetry a definition that’s almost devotional: it’s not raw experience transcribed, but a second-order refinement, “the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.” The doubled “exquisite” is doing the heavy lifting. It suggests poetry isn’t primarily about novelty or confession; it’s about selection, distillation, and reverent polishing of what is already elevated. In other words, the poet isn’t a miner hauling up ore, but a jeweler recutting gems.

That has a clear subtext: not everything deserves the consecration of verse. Coming from a religious figure, the line smuggles in an ethic of hierarchy and taste. Poetry becomes a kind of liturgy of language, reserved for moments, emotions, or insights deemed worthy. It’s a quiet rebuke to the idea that simply feeling intensely is enough; Roux implies that intensity must be shaped into form, and form is a moral as well as aesthetic discipline.

The phrasing also hints at a context where “poetry” was understood as a high art with standards, gatekeeping, and decorum - closer to the cultivated epigram than to the messy sprawl of everyday speech. Yet there’s a sly tautology in the definition: poetry is exquisite because it is exquisite. That circularity is the point. Roux is describing not a set of techniques but a social function: poetry as the place language goes when it wants to sound like its best self, when speech is trying to become ceremony.