A Quote by Seamus Heaney

It has as much to do with the energy released by linguistic fission and fusion, with the buoyancy generated by cadence and tone and rhyme and stanza, as it has to do with the poem's concerns or the poet's truthfulness.

Seamus Heaney

Quote Topics

Buoyancy Cadence Concerns Energy Fission Fusion Linguistic Much Poem Poet Released Rhyme Tone Truthfulness

Quote Author

Seamus Heaney
Irish - Poet
April 13, 1939 - August 30, 2013

The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.

Billy Collins

Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!

William McDonough

The technologists claim that if everything works [in a nuclear fission reactor] according to their blueprints, fission energy will be a safe and very attractive solution to the energy needs of the world. ... The real issue is whether their blueprints will work in the real world and not only in a "technological paradise."... Opponents of fission energy point out a number of differences between the real world and the "technological paradise." ... No acts of God can be permitted.

Hannes Alfven

Rhyme to kill, rhyme to murder, rhyme to stomp, Rhyme to ill, rhyme to romp, Rhyme to smack, rhyme to shock, rhyme to roll, Rhyme to destroy anything, toy boy. On the microphone: I'm Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.

Kool Keith

My holy grail is fusion energy. Nuclear fusion has little to no radioactive waste. It's clean. It's very abundant. The fuels are everywhere. There are problems with fusion.

Taylor Wilson

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.

Maya Angelou

Divorce: fission after fusion.

Rita Mae Brown

A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader.

Charles Olson

Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice, and lend to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of thy voice.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I never indulge in rhyme or stanza Unless I'm in bed with the influenza.

Quintus Ennius

One-third of the world, it has been said, may be free- -but one-third is the victim of cruel repression--and the other one- third is rocked by the pangs of poverty, hunger and envy. More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself.

John F. Kennedy

I know that in a poem, even when the speaker is speaking from the poet's experience, there's always something that's borrowed, some authority that sits outside of the poet that the poem has claimed. There's a dramatic pitch that makes the speaker capable of saying something more courageous or stranger or simply other than what the poet would be able to say.

Tracy K. Smith

Generally speaking, rhyme is the marker for the end of a line. The first rhyme-word is like a challenge thrown down, which the poem itself has to respond to.

James Fenton

There's always an added element of a poem when it's read aloud because then you can really hear the rhythm, and the cadence, and even the pronunciation sometimes adds another layer to the poem.

Masiela Lusha

Each poem seems to demand its own formal approach. In both drafting and revision, I'll play around with line lengths and stanza formations, eventually letting the poem settle into what I think is its own best form.