Reading John Carey: W.H.Auden, Rhythm and Poetry

(source: quoteko.com)
no copyright infringement intended)

One night he (Auden) talked about rhythm in poetry, and how his poems - or some of them - came to him as rhythms rather than as words or ideas, and how he had to find words and ideas to fit the rhythms.

(John Carey, The Unexpected Professor - An Oxford Life in Books, Faber and Faber, 2015, ISBN 978-0-571-31093-7, pp.151-152)

(Auden)

(John Carey)