Vernon Scannell quotes

The great artist may be, outside the confines of his art, cruel, weak, arrogant and foolish, but within them he can transcend his own condition and become noble, passionate and truthful beyond the range of ordinary men. (Vernon Scannell)
Of my childhood & youth the greater part of which had been spent in an atmosphere of cultural twilight.
Vernon Scannell
As a writer, I must keep writing, poems can never be forced, the muses will not be raped, so I feel this kind of prose (autobiography), however inadequate, share some of the exploratory features of the poetic use of language.
Vernon Scannell
All true poets are, of course, primarily concerned with artifact, the making of a verbal construct, a durable work of art.
Vernon Scannell
The best poetry of the second World war written by both British & American servicemen need not fear comparison with the generally more well highly regarded work of the 1914-18 poets.
Vernon Scannell
The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear. The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.
Vernon Scannell
The genuinely innovatory, the truly 'experiential' poetry is always firmly rooted in the achievement of the past.
Vernon Scannell
The intellect had rejected the rational basis of belief, yet the imagination & sensibility yearn for simple faith.
Vernon Scannell
I was the living proof of T. S Eliot's assertion that poetry can communicate before it is understood. the conscious, analytical part of my response was lulled into a kind of stupor by the rhythms and richness of the imagery of the poetry I was reading.
Vernon Scannell
All I am is in my verse.
Vernon Scannell
The best poetry of WW2, the most truthful and penetrating, poetry which is rooted in the ground of physical experience, suspicious of the abstract and conforming to the discipline of provenly effective forms. (Vernon Scannell)
The poet, absorbed in the solving of formal problems, the struggle with slippery eels of language, has no time for dissimulation and he tells us more about himself than he knows.
Vernon Scannell
Some poets are more deeply involved than others in the raw experience which lies behind the poem and for them the act of composition is an act of self exploration with the definite goal of enlightenment rather than the ideally depersonalized construction of a beautiful and autonomous object.
Vernon Scannell
Ther poetry of the second World War conveys the true feeling of those desolate and desperate days with an urgency and sense of truth that no other means of recording could emulate.
Vernon Scannell
The poet's need to try to find his own voice, a recognizable individual voice that carries the signature of his voice in almost every line... the unique tone being the consequence of the poet's rigorous search for truth ( his truth(, his absolute fidelity to the nature of the experience he was exploring.
Vernon Scannell
You can find out far more about a writer from his poems or fiction.. because in his stories or poems, his preoccupations, obsessions, moral standards, the quality of his intelligence, his loves, hates, aspirations, belief and fears.. insist on expression.
Vernon Scannell
The authentic British poetry of the second world war was not a poetry of protest, still less was it inspired by patriotic enthusiasm.
Vernon Scannell
The proper act of reading of a poem was not an act of passive submission but one of collaboration with its author.
Vernon Scannell
The desire of a poet for his writings to be in print is as natural as a painter needs to exhibit his work in public.
Vernon Scannell
It is impossible for a poet to fashion the voice deliberately by contrivance and experiment; it could not be discovered or simulated through the cultivation of an eccentric diction or prosody, or by the employment of regional speech rhythms and patterns.
Vernon Scannell
The impulse to create is pure, self sufficient, its own reward or punishment. (Vernon Scannell)
The servicemen of the 1939 - 45 war could not be disillusioned because they held not illusions to start with, the most common mood found everywhere was one of dour resolution, skeptical, resigned.
Vernon Scannell
A word or a phrase or a line is not a poem. A poem is the exploration and shaping of an experience. A real poem demands intelligence, imagination, passion, understanding, experience and not least a knowledge of the craft.
Vernon Scannell
Past events are not dead but constantly making their claims on the present, modifying it even as they themselves are modified in the maw of subsequent events and in the memory which is part of the shaping of imagination.
Vernon Scannell
I believe one of the functions of language used poetically is to explore experiences and hidden sources of behavior in a way that will not be tedious to the reader.
Vernon Scannell