Here it is…
“Not the least of the pleasures of rhyme is the rage it inspires in those poor people who think they know something more important than a convention. They hold the naïve belief that a thought can be more profound, more organic…than any mere convention.” (Italics in source)
from “A Poet’s Notebook” in Valéry, The Art of Poetry, tr. Folliot, D. New York: Pantheon Books, 1958: page 179 (“Calepin d’un poète” in Poèsie, essai sur la poétique et le poète, 1928)
Valéry has many, many wonderful and pregnant things to say about the writing of verse.
Clive
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