Quote Origin: All True Poems Are About Love, Death, or the Changing of the Seasons

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Robert Graves? Samuel R. Delany? Marilyn Hacker? Apocryphal?

Leaf colors depicting seasonal changes from Unsplash

Question for Quote Investigator: The following witty remark is popular in poetry circles although its accuracy is debated:

All true poetry is about love, death, or the changing of the seasons.

This statement has been attributed to the English poet and historical novelist Robert Graves; however, I have never seen a solid citation; hence, I am skeptical. Would you please explore the provenance of this remark?

Reply from Quote Investigator: QI has been unable to find this precise statement in the writings of Robert Graves. QI hypothesizes that the saying was derived from a thematically similar remark in “The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth” which Graves published in 1948 and enlarged in 1952. The key sentence occurred at the end of the following passage. Boldface added to excerpts:1

Originally, the poet was the leader of a totem-society of religious dancers. His verses—versus is a Latin word corresponding to the Greek strophe and means ‘a turning’—were danced around an altar or in a sacred enclosure and each verse started a new turn or movement in the dance.

The word ‘ballad’ has the same origin: it is a dance poem, from the Latin ballare, to dance. All the totem-societies in ancient Europe were under the dominion of the Great Goddess, the Lady of the Wild Things; dances were seasonal and fitted into an annual pattern from which gradually emerges the single grand theme of poetry: the life, death and resurrection of the Spirit of the Year, the Goddess’s son and lover.

The quotation in the form specified by the inquiry was popularized by the science fiction author Samuel R. Delany starting in 1975. Delany believed that the quotation appeared in “The White Goddess”. The best partial match found by QI within “The White Goddess” is the sentence above. Detailed citations for Delany are given further below.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1957 Robert Graves published an essay about English poet William Wordsworth which criticized his wordiness. Graves made an assertion about “all true poetry”:2

All true poetry is economical of words.

In December 1970 Robert Graves was interviewed by James McKinley in “Playboy” magazine. Graves suggested that all valuable poetry was matriarchal and not patriarchal:3

Patriarchal or Apollonian poetry started with ballads about war. Beowulf and the Icelandic sagas are examples. Such poems were enough for the men of the time when they sat together in a mead hall, throwing plates and bones at each other. But they lack lasting emotional value, because they are centered on war, not love. All poetry of value is matriarchal in its origin.

During the “Playboy” interview Graves also highlighted the hypnotic aspect of poetry:4

An enormously important part of poetry is the incantatory and hypnotic effect. All poetry really is, or should be, hypnotic. Homer, for example, used meter to hypnotize, by recalling the dactylic steps around the sacred hermae.

In 1971 “The Penguin Companion to Literature: Britain and The Commonwealth” presented the following capsule summary of the thesis of “The White Goddess”:5

The theory behind this book is that all true poetry is in subjection to a Muse, who represents both Nature and the primitive traditions of a matriarchal religion and society, and who is both creative and destructive, both to be loved and feared.

In 1975 Samuel R. Delany published the science fiction novel “Dhalgren” which contained a character who stated the target quotation while crediting Robert Graves:6

“Every once in a while something comes along to remind me that I am — though not as often as I would sometimes like — after all, a poet. What is it Mr Graves says? All poetry is about love, death, or the changing of the seasons. Well, here the seasons do not change. So I’m leaving.”

An interview with Delany was conducted in 1983 by Sinda Gregory, and Larry McCaffery. The transcript was published in “Science Fiction Studies” in 1987. Delany attributed a version of the quotation to Graves:7

As Robert Graves noticed years ago, all poems tend to be about love, death, or the changing of the seasons. A clever observation, and it’s insightful. But in the long run we still have to say that a poem can be about anything.

In 1987 Marilyn Hacker published a collection of poetry titled “Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons”. Hacker and Delany were married between 1961 and 1980. The book did not directly mention Robert Graves.8

In 1990 Samuel R. Delany published an edition of “The Motion of Light in Water: East Village Sex and Science Fiction Writing: 1960-1965” together with “The Column at the Market’s Edge”. The following passage appeared in the latter section of the book. Delany pointed to “The White Goddess” as the source of the quotation:9

… the status of this observation is of the same order as Robert Graves’s observation in The White Goddess that ‘all true poems are about love, death, or the changing of the seasons.’

Also, in 1990 Larry McCaffery, published “Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers”. This book reprinted the Delany interview from “Science Fiction Studies”.10

In 1996 “The Sunday Age” newspaper of Melbourne, Australia printed the following:11

The writing also happens to be memorable and clear: the ideal, nay the only, style when your concerns are those Robert Graves told us are an author’s ever constants: love, death and the changing of the seasons.

In conclusion, the earliest close match for this quotation appeared in the 1975 novel “Dhalgren” by Samuel R. Delany. Later in 1990 Delany pointed to Robert Graves’s “The White Goddess” as the source of the quotation. QI was unable to find a close match in that book, but QI did find a partial match and hypothesizes that the quotation was created based on an imperfect memory.

Image Notes: Leaf colors depicting seasonal changes from Chris Lawton at Unsplash. This image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Christopher Spaide whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Spaide told QI about the book by Marilyn Hacker.

  1. 1948 Copyright (1952 Amended and Enlarged), The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth by Robert Graves, Chapter 24: The Single Poetic Theme, Quote Page 420, Faber and Faber, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  2. 1957 September 9, The New Republic, Wordsworth by Cable by Robert Graves, Start Page 10, Quote Page 11, The New Republic Inc., New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  3. 1989, Conversations with Robert Graves, Edited by Frank L. Kersnowski, Playboy Interview in December 1970: James McKinley interviews Robert Graves, Start Page 144, Quote Page 163, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi, (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  4. 1989, Conversations with Robert Graves, Edited by Frank L. Kersnowski, Playboy Interview in December 1970: James McKinley interviews Robert Graves, Start Page 144, Quote Page 163, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi, (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  5. 1971 Copyright, The Penguin Companion to Literature: Britain and The Commonwealth, Edited by David Daiches, Entry: Robert Ranke Graves, Quote Page 221, Column 2, Allen Lane: The Penguin Press, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  6. 1975, Dhalgren  by Samuel R. Delany, Chapter 4, Quote Page 390 and 391, Bantam Books, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  7. 1987 July, Science Fiction Studies, Volume 14, Number 42, Part 2, Article: The Semiology of Silence, (Conversation from August 1983 between Samuel R. Delany, Sinda Gregory, and Larry McCaffery), Archive of Science Fiction Studies at Depauw University website link, Interview link (Accessed May 7, 2025) ↩︎
  8. 1987, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons by Marilyn Hacker, (Quotation appears as book title), Onlywomen Press, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  9. 1990, The Motion of Light in Water: East Village Sex and Science Fiction Writing: 1960-1965 with The Column at the Market’s Edge by Samuel R. Delany, Section: The Column at the Market’s Edge, Quote Page 537, Paladin: Grafton Books, London. (Note: the quotation does not appear in the 1988 edition) (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  10. 1990, Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers, Conducted and Edited by Larry McCaffery, An Interview with Samuel R. Delany, Start Page 71, Quote Page 79, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  11. 1996 June 30, The Sunday Age, Section: Agenda, Awake to every cadence of abuse by Alan Wearne, (Book review of John Scott’s “Before I Wake”), Quote Page 8, Column 2, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎