A Quote by James Fenton

In my opinion, it is easier to avoid iambic rhythms, when writing in syllabics, if you create a line or pattern of lines using odd numbers of syllables.

James Fenton

Quote Topics

Avoid Create Easier In My Opinion Line Lines Numbers Odd Odd Numbers Opinion Pattern Rhythms Syllables Using Writing

Quote Author

James Fenton
British - Poet
Born: April 25, 1949

In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet…There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter…And each line has to end with a rigid pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet…But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants…You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

Madeleine L'Engle

I think of writing--particularly of writing picture books--as a kind of choreography. A picture book must have pace and movement and pattern. Pictures and text should, together, create the pattern, rather than simply run parallel.

Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. Away; go. They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.

William Shakespeare

With pencil there is a tendency to be timid, either using very faint lines or erasing bad lines... Line sketching tends to emphasize the structure of a drawing rather than the nuances of media.

Paul Laseau

When I'm constructing a poem, I'm trying to write one good line after another. One solid line after another. You know a lot of the lines - some hold up better as lines than others. But I'm not thinking of just writing a paragraph and then chopping it up.

Billy Collins

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

Howard Nemerov

Round numbers beg to be negotiated, usually by counteroffer round numbers. Odd numbers sound harder, firmer, less negotiable.

Mark McCormack

A line has to have a certain number of syllables, and the next line has to be its mirror image.

Bonnie McKee

The level at which my OCD enters my writing process isn't that I slap the keyboard - it's more along the lines of a compulsive need to swap syllables around, rework words and sentences - I revise for the pleasure and satisfaction of it, rather than out of a sense of duty.

Jonathan Lethem

Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)

Milan Kundera

From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound.

Nicholson Baker

One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one of the most intoxicating features of poetry. It creates expectations, which can be fulfilled or frustrated. It can create a sense of boredom and complacency, but it can also incite enchantment and inspire bliss.

Edward Hirsch

The two black lines on the armband means that they're the deceased's family. One line means they are either friends or acquaintances. One line of the arm, one line on the heart. The bastards who stood by my side with two lines, they'll be the hardest farewells I'll have to make in my life, and they're the luckiest fortune I've met in my lifetime.

Yoon Sang-hyun

In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.

James Mattis

In books, you can just wallow in dialogue, and you can just wallow in written words. In screenplays, every line has to serve the purpose of the line that's implied before it and the line that's implied after it. Maybe five lines have to do the work of fifty lines.