"Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose"
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Landor is drawing a border war between genres, and he does it with the cool superiority of someone who’s spent a lifetime patrolling it. Prose, he suggests, is structurally confident: it can “bear” poetry the way a strong beam can take ornament. Add lyric compression, rhythmic lift, metaphorical charge, and the sentence might even get better - energized without losing its load-bearing purpose. The implication is almost architectural: prose is built to carry meaning forward; poetry is built to make meaning shimmer in place.
Then comes the dagger: poetry “sinks and swoons” under even “a moderate weight of prose.” Landor isn’t merely defending poetry’s purity; he’s diagnosing its fragility. Let too much explanation, connective tissue, scene-setting, or moralizing seep in and the poem collapses into something else: competent, maybe, but dead on the page. “Swoons” is doing extra work here, casting poetry as exquisitely sensitive, even fainting at the blunt force of plain statement. It’s a romantic image that’s also a reprimand.
Context matters. Landor writes from a 19th-century literary ecosystem where poems were expected to be elevated, concentrated, and formally distinct, while prose - in essays, novels, reviews - was becoming the dominant public instrument for argument and narrative. His line quietly polices that distinction while admitting cross-pollination: prose can steal poetry’s best tricks. Poetry can’t afford prose’s habits. The subtext is a warning to writers tempted to “clarify” their poems into oblivion.
Then comes the dagger: poetry “sinks and swoons” under even “a moderate weight of prose.” Landor isn’t merely defending poetry’s purity; he’s diagnosing its fragility. Let too much explanation, connective tissue, scene-setting, or moralizing seep in and the poem collapses into something else: competent, maybe, but dead on the page. “Swoons” is doing extra work here, casting poetry as exquisitely sensitive, even fainting at the blunt force of plain statement. It’s a romantic image that’s also a reprimand.
Context matters. Landor writes from a 19th-century literary ecosystem where poems were expected to be elevated, concentrated, and formally distinct, while prose - in essays, novels, reviews - was becoming the dominant public instrument for argument and narrative. His line quietly polices that distinction while admitting cross-pollination: prose can steal poetry’s best tricks. Poetry can’t afford prose’s habits. The subtext is a warning to writers tempted to “clarify” their poems into oblivion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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