Robert Graves Poems Quotes & Sayings

But the most gratifying message was a warm-hearted and completely unexpected letter from Robert Graves, who had just been shown Wilfred's latest poems by Sassoon. 'Don't make any mistake, Owen,' Graves wrote, 'you are a damned fine poet already & are going to be more so... you have found a new method... those assonances instead of rhymes are fine - Puff out your chest a little, Owen & be big - for you've more right than most of us... You must help S.S. and R.N. and R.G. to revolutionize English Poetry - So outlive this War. — Dominic Hibberd

I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people. — Robert Graves

Malthus's school was in the centre of the town of Adrianople, and was not one of those monkish schools where education is miserably limited to the bread and water of the Holy Scriptures. Bread is good and water is good, but the bodily malnutrition that may be observed in prisoners or poor peasants who are reduced to this diet has its counterpart in the spiritual malnutrition of certain clerics. These can recite the genealogy of King David of the Jews as far back as Deucalion's Flood, and behind the Flood to Adam, without a mistake, or can repeat whole chapters of the Epistles of Saint Paul as fluently as if they were poems written in metre; but in all other respects are as ignorant as fish or birds. — Robert Graves

But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck! — Robert Graves