Sunday, September 26, 2010

Thought for the day ...

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
- T.S. Eliot, born on this date in1888

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2 comments:

  1. Shelley10:24 PM

    Well, you just wrecked my day!

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  2. Cynthia Haven2:18 AM

    Joseph Brodsky said that poetry was an "accelerated mental process." Certainly we write for the wonder of operating at a higher r.p.m., if nothing else.

    But beyond that, he said that we write "to please a shadow" -- for our ancestors, not our descendants. We write to continue the thread of conversation they left behind.

    I think Tom Eliot must have been having a very, very bad day when he wrote this.

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