Poetry is like trying to remember a tune you’ve forgotten.
I’m against this poetry as craft business… Poetry (at any rate in my case) is like trying to remember a tune you’ve forgotten. All corrections are attemps to get nearer the forgotten tune. A poem is written because the poet gets a sudden vision — lasting one second or less — and he attempts to express the whole of which the vision is a part. Or he attemps to express the vision. Blake was lucky: ‘I dare not pretend to be other than the secretary: the authors are in eternity.’ And: ‘I have written this poem from immediate dictation… even against my will.’ He was constantly in contact with the vision. Shelley is his Defence of Poetry points out that even the greatest poetry is only one-tenth or less as good as what the poet originally conceived, or felt. Lawrence had his ‘daemon’ which spoke through him.
Philip Larkin in: Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin. A Writer’s Life, 72.
[x]#3408 fan zaterdag 1 maart 2008 @ 08:00:00
