I’m reading A Survey of Modernist Poetry by Laura Riding and Robert Graves. This struck me:

“Yet the sonnet theory can be provoked in Shakespeare’s sonnets as all pre-Shakespearian dramatic theories can be provoked in his plays.”

The sentence is in service of the authors view that it’s not enough to present as evidence of experimentation an excellent poem as excellent poems may have in them borrowings as well as innovations. I very much liked the use of “provoked.”