Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Note to poets everywhere

If your poems are not more interesting than you are, change vocations.

4 comments:

Robert Schwab said...

Good advice, Richard. It speaks to the need for universality in all poems.

Anonymous said...

What if your poems are interesting, but you are also just super-super-interesting, possibly the most interesting person in history, ever. Should the world be deprived of your interesting poems just because they can't live up to the interestingness of their creator? Affirmative action for poems!

Richard Epstein said...

Byron was such a poet, a pretty good one, too, but except perhaps for "Don Juan," much more interesting as a man than as a poet; and, though people still talk about him, the poems, for the most part, are dead as doornails.

And next time, have the courage--and good manners--to sign your name.

karensomethingorother said...

ha--clever.