Hanging with the heavies …

… In ‘Old Poets,’ Donald Hall dished on Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot and more. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Hall makes quick work of the eternal seesaw of literary reputations: “Writers with enormous followings in their own lifetimes go unread and unmentioned a generation later . . . [their] stock market prices declined” for “trivial reasons.” In fact, “popularity always rises from sources partly silly, even when the poet is magnificent. . . . It is sensible to assume that the taste of our own moment will come to seem fatuous, including your taste and mine.”