Great Regulars: More interesting was Housman's own definition of poetry,

taken from his own 1933 lecture, that poetry is "not the thing said, but a way of saying it". At the time of saying it, his definition caused quite a to-do--FR Leavis apparently saw it as an assault on his canonical mode of criticism. But I've turned it over in my mind a few times, and, though it's broad and imprecise, I can't see anything very wrong with it.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Poetically speaking at the Hay festival

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