Cleanth Brooks Quotes

• When we try to describe one person to another …, what do we say? Not usually how or what that person ate, rarely what he wore, only occasionally how he managed his job—no, what we tell is what he said and, if we are good mimics, how he said it. We apparently consider a person's spoken words the true essence of his being.

  Cleanth Brooks

  Jobs, Essence, Trying

  Cleanth Brooks (2007). “The Language of the American South”, p.33, University of Georgia Press

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• Man's experience is indeed a seamless garment, no part of which can be separated from the rest.

  Cleanth Brooks

  Men, Garments, Seamless

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• The poet wants to ‘say’ something. Why, then, doesn’t he say it directly and fortrightly? Why is he willing to say it only through his metaphors? Through his metaphors, he risks saying it partially and obscurely, and risks saying nothing at all. But the risk must be taken, for direct statement leads to abstraction and threatens to take us out of poetry altogether.

  Cleanth Brooks

  Taken, Risk, Want

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