#Alexander Pope quotes

[wocado]

Blessed is he who expects nothing ~ @MrAlexanderPope

Blessed is he who expects nothing,

small expectations, no expectations, expectation, expectation quotes, disappointment, disappointment quotes, Alexander Pope quotes #PICTUREQUOTES, #QUOTES

[thepersonalwords]

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

Alexander Pope

[eternal--returned]

Cynthia Grow ֍ Love Letters - Alexander Pope to Teresa Blount, 7 August 1716 (2024)

[aerelian]

“A little learning is a dang’rous thing; Drink deep or taste not the Pierian¹ spring.”

— Alexander Pope, from his 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism;

¹ — Sacred spring near ancient Leivithra in Pieria, a region of ancient Macedonia, also the location of Mount Olympus, and believed to be the home and the seat of worship of Orpheus. Believed to be a fountain of knowledge that inspires whoever drinks from it.

[pedrovallentin]

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"

[septembersung]

We had Instapoetry as a topic in class, and we had a long discussion about what poetry is, etc., and the professor said, "everything that claims to be a poem is a poem." This reminded me of the book "How poetry means" by John Ciardi, which you recommended a while ago. Having read a lot of Instapoetry, I'm not sure my prof's definition is valid: if everything can be poetry, then nothing is. Just because something's structured in lines and stanzas doesn't make it a poem. What are your thoughts?

Your professor is as wrong as wrong can be. If I claim to be a pencil, does that make me one? Self-identification means nothing if it's not based in reality. If words don't have meanings, they... don't mean anything. So you're quite right. If any particular thing is a poem, poetry is nothing in particular.

The last century's experiment with changing the definition of art from "a work meeting specific criteria for creation and excellence in a given medium" to "this is art because I am an artist" and "it's art because I say it is" is a case study in degeneracy. "Anything is art" is a failed experiment. You can't get anyone to admit it though because it is so tied to a worldview - like all claims about art, it's really a claim about the nature and purpose of human beings and reality. And people get defensive when you question their religion.

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics entry on "poetry" discusses versification, lineation, and heightened language as essential to this "verbal art." "Prose is cast in sentences; poetry is cast in sentences cast into lines."

Poetry is an art crafted of words that are extremely ordered. As Coleridge said, prose is words in the best order, poetry is the best words in the best order. Contemporary "free verse" like instapoetry, even if it contains incidental rhythm or the occasional rhyme or some other individual characteristic of poetry, is usually a single emotion, thought, or political statement stripped of the very layers of kinds of order that poetry is made of - meter, lines (distinct from inconsequential hits of the enter key,) heightened language, image (concrete, metaphorical, or imaginative), beautiful sound, "an experience irreducible to paraphrase," or even that delicate triangle balance of thought, emotion, and image that constitutes what's considered good contemporary free verse. It's not just about the content, but about what the physical (as it were) words are doing, and - this is where Ciardi comes in - how they do it.

I think the point about lineation is worth coming back to. You said "Just because something's structured in lines and stanzas doesn't make it a poem." Exactly this. Take this paragraph; I could go back through and format it to "look" like a poem, with shorter lines and stanza breaks, but that would not add anything to the content. Poetic lines have actual function in the meaning and experience of the poem.

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense."

Thanks for this ask!

[filmcentury]

A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744), English poet, translator, and satirist, from An Essay on Criticism (1709)

[stromuprisahat]

Cesare: So why we should now make common cause with Milan [after it let France pass through their lands earlier]? Rodrigo: Because, when the French have left this fair paradise, the Milanese will still be with us. Cesare: So? Rodrigo: This league cannot beat the French… even in their weakened state. And I doubt the French can beat this league. So if the two armies batter each other to death, as the lawyers often say, cui bono? Cesare: Who benefits? Rodrigo: Mm. A weakened Milan, a weakened Venice, a weakened Mantua- has to be worth a weekend in Tuscany, surely?

[between-quotation-marks]

[...] How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd; [...]

— Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard"

[byronicist]

"in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage"

Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1717)

[sakshinarula]

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot

The world forgetting, by the world forgot

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.

- Alexander Pope

Does anyone else love this quote? I always wanted to record it in my voice and somehow would always forget. Anyway I did it today...Good Morning 🌞

[wocado]

Blessed is he who expects nothing ~ @MrAlexanderPope

Blessed is he who expects nothing,

small expectations, no expectations, expectation, expectation quotes, disappointment, disappointment quotes, Alexander Pope quotes #PICTUREQUOTES, #QUOTES

[giveafuckofyou]

Never find fault with the absent.

Alexander Pope

[noleavestoblow]

"The sound must seem an echo to the sense."

-Alexander Pope

[poligraf]

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore; What future bliss He gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

— Alexander Pope

[j-august]

Lord John Hervey to Stephen Fox, in Lord Hervey and his Friends, 1726-1738, ed. The Earl of Ilchester