"It follows that poetry is an autonomous activity in which argument, theory, erudition and observation are merely what Blake called 'little devils who fight for themselves,' illusion of our visible passing life, who must be made to serve the moods, or we have no part in eternity."
- W.B. Yeats
"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to escape from these.
- T.S. Elliot
"...the poem as a whole, an orbit or predetermined direction of its own. I would like to establish it as free from my own personality as from any chance evaluation on the reader's part."
- Hart Crane
Taken from Modern Poets on Modern Poetry edited by James Scully.
"For art is perfect only when it looks like nature, and again, nature hits the mark only when she conceals that is within her."
- Chapter 22, Longinus's On the Sublime
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