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Poems are the Duracell batteries of language, says Simon Armitage

29 May 2021

9:00 AM

29 May 2021

9:00 AM

A Vertical Art: Oxford Lectures Simon Armitage

Faber, pp.376, 25

Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’. Simon Armitage saying the same thing, memorably, genially, metaphorically, democratically: ‘How much power and force could be stored in — and retransmitted by — such compact shapes. Poems as the Duracell batteries of language.’

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