James Fenton
James Fenton
James Martin Fenton FRSL FRSAis an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 April 1949
morning reading writing
I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.
rap lows cases
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.
latin age use
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval 'Carmina Burana' - tends to be somewhat crude stuff in comparison with the classical verse that doesn't.
dark long racism
The Mormon mission to Africa, as to other dark-skinned parts of the world, was for a long time hobbled by the racism of the movement's scripture.
transmission carrie
Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral.
writing faces problem
One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.
practice hymns four
At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.
drama littles wealth
Considering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it is surprising that so little of any value has been added since.
enough accounts
Oh let us not be condemned for what we are. It is enough to account for what we do.
world tough tough-world
Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world.
self musical doe
The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting.
epic narrative heroic
My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost - that it is born again.
two together weight
It normally happens that if you put two words together, or two syllables together, one of them will attract more weight, more emphasis, than the other. In other words, most so-called spondees can be read as either iambs or trochees.
eye writing demand
Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty.