scope in a single subject

One of the most daring paradoxical minds, Lucian of Samosata, defined, as early as the second century AD, the concept of creation. In discussing a painting by the Greek master Zeuxis, he justified the singularity of the masterpiece, which is not only a token of skills, but has as much to do with the expression of a vision: “There are no doubt qualities in the painting which evade analysis by a mere amateur, and yet involve supreme craftsmanship—such things as precision of line, perfect mastery of the palette, clever brushwork, management of shadow, perspective, proportion, and relation of part to the whole; but I leave that to the professionals whose business it is to appreciate it; what strikes me especially about Zeuxis is the manifold scope which he has found for his extraordinary skill, in a single subject.”

—Lucian of Samosata, “Zeuxis and Antiochus,” Works of Lucian, Vol. II (Clarendon Press, 1905), translated by H. W. Fowler.

[Quote found in Donatien Grau’s The Age of Creation (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2015)]

song and charge

Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made...

—W.B. Yeats, "Under Ben Bulben"

a table or a chair

her [Sylvia Plath's] attitude to her verse was artisanlike: if she couldn't get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy. The end product for her was not so much a successful poem, as something that had temporarily exhausted her ingenuity.

—Ted Hughes, in his introduction to The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes (Harper & Row, 1981)

just run

I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have; I don’t even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout, "Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep."

—Frank O'Hara, "Personism"