The Art of Quotation (Part VI)

Robert Macfarlane, in his brilliant The Old Ways (2012), says of the poet Edward Thomas,

The overlooked and the unnoticed attract him: the “flowers of rose-bay on ruinous hearths and walls” or “the long narrowing wedge of irises that runs alongside and between the rails of the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway,” almost into the heart of London.

The wonderful quotes are from Thomas’s journal. I like the way Macfarlane introduces them, briskly stating Thomas’s aesthetic (‘The overlooked and the unnoticed attract him”), then using a colon to adduce the examples. Macfarlane’s addition at the end (“almost into the heart of London”) is inspired!

Credit: The above photo of Robert Macfarlane is by Charlotte Hadden.