A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.

Meaning of the quote

Poems, like trees, grow and develop gradually over time. Just as trees add a new ring of wood each spring, poets create and share new work regularly. Poems don't suddenly appear all at once, but rather are produced little by little, with each new piece contributing to the overall work, much like the rings in a tree.

About Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen was an English poet and soldier who fought in World War I. His powerful poems, such as “Dulce et Decorum est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” vividly depicted the horrors of trench warfare and stood in contrast to the more patriotic war poetry of the time. Tragically, Wilfred Owen was killed in action just a week before the end of the war.

More about the author

More quotes from Wilfred Owen

I don’t ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

The war effects me less than it ought. I can do no service to anybody by agitating for news or making dole over the slaughter.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

All a poet can do today is warn.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to-it leaves nothing.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

If I have got to be a soldier, I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Flying is the only active profession I would ever continue with enthusiasm after the War.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet’s.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Be bullied, be outraged, by killed, but do not kill.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

She is elegant rather than belle.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose.

Wilfred Owen

English poet and soldier (1893-1918)