Life & Wisdom Quote by John Drinkwater

A poet doesn’t just choose a word; he resuscitates it. Drinkwater’s line is a quiet provocation aimed at anyone who treats language as a neutral tool rather than a living medium. “Perfect selection” sounds almost clinical, like a jeweler’s precision, but the payoff is biological: the word is “endowed...with life.” That hinge from craft to animation is the whole argument. The poet’s labor isn’t ornamental; it’s generative, turning a dead token into something that can move through a reader like a pulse.

The subtext is a defense of poetic authority at a moment when modern life was mechanizing speech: journalism, bureaucracy, slogans, the churn of mass print. In that world, words risk becoming standardized units, exchanged for convenience, stripped of texture. Drinkwater, writing in early 20th-century Britain, implicitly pushes back against that flattening. The “perfect selection” isn’t just about accuracy; it’s about restoring freshness to language that has been worn smooth by habit.

Intent also hides a moral claim: the poet carries responsibility for the vitality of public speech. If words can be given life, they can also be drained of it. Drinkwater’s formulation elevates the poet from mere describer to caretaker, someone who reclaims precision, surprise, and emotional voltage from cliche. It flatters the poet, yes, but it also sets a high bar: you don’t get “life” from decoration. You get it from the exact word that makes the world feel newly named.