“But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.”
Author details
Related authors
Other Lascelles Abercrombie Quotes
It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.
Lascelles Abercrombie 
72% of people like this quote
With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.
Lascelles Abercrombie
63% of people like this quote
It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.
Lascelles Abercrombie
60% of people like this quote
No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.
Lascelles Abercrombie
60% of people like this quote
If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.
Lascelles Abercrombie
58% of people like this quote