Lionel Trilling on poetry

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Robert Frost1874–1963

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

T. S. Eliot1888–1965“Philip Massinger”, a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood (1920)

Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963Reflections on the Psalms