Volume 40, Number 6 · March 25, 1993
Some Mistakes People Make About Poetry
By James Fenton
Writing from Ravenna to Thomas Moore in 1821, Byron said that he could 'never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of an excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake or an eternal fever.' And he added as an after-thought: 'Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?' It's worth hearing this from Byron of all people—Byron who could fill his days with riding, lovemaking, and drinking and then sit down late at night in an excited passion and pen an extraordinarily large number of stanzas. But Byron's standards in passion were high. There was no such thing as a life of passion, and there was no such thing as a life of poetry.
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