Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away. The same thing is true of poetry. Just recall how unbearable poems become when they are recited by actors, who, wanting to “interpret,” ignore the meter of the verse, make dramatic enjambements as if they were declaiming prose, concern themselves with the content and not with the rhythm. To read a classical poem in rhyme, you have to assume the singing rhythm the poet wanted. It’s better to recite Dante as if he had written children’s jingles than to pursue only his meanings to the exclusion of everything else.

(Umberto Eco, author’s postscript in his novel The Name of the Rose. This quotation was shared with me by OutsideAuthority.)

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