day by day: a blog
January 07, 2009
don't pity the monsters
[Robert Lowell on the cover of Time, 2 June 1967] I'm lost in admiration -- for the poets who self-apostasized, shocking and aweing their early admirers. Auden, Lowell, Plath, Hughes, Rich, Pound, Moore, Eliot, Yeats, Pound.... Defying success, defying favour seem gestures somehow linked to greatness. As I say, I'm lost in reverence for the poets (often, especially in the cases of the men, appalling characters) who turned away from those who thought they understood and who sympathized.
Posted by njenkins at January 7, 2009 06:52 PM
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