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The Immortal Minds Were His Brethren

Only a few close friends knew of his theory: that much which is unworthy in human life might be avoided if people would only accustom themselves to talking in verse. “It need not exactly rhyme,” he said. “Nay, it really ought not to rhyme. Rhyming verse in the long run is an underhand attack on the true being of poetry. But we should express our feelings, and communicate with one another, in blank verse. For iambics gently sway our nature’s rawness—to noble worth, and zealously divide—chatter and tripe and scandal’s overspill—from gold and silver in the human speech.” In the great moments of his existence Herr Soerensen himself thought in iambics.

—Isak Dinesen, “Tempests”

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