Thursday 19 November 2009

Poets

"I think everyone writes poems when they are sixteen; it is a phase in a passage from adolescence to adulthood. I do not remember where I read that there are two kinds of poets: the good poets, who at a certain point destroy their bad poems and go off to run guns in Africa, and bad poets, who publish theirs and keep writing more until they die."
- Umberto Eco from The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

I don't really get the whole "run guns in Africa" reference but I really like the idea that it is the bad poets who are publishing. I have a very weird relationship with poetry. I write it but I think my poems are hilarious crap. I read it and love some but as a whole find the form fairly annoying. I hate studying it. Poetry is a strange thing.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Umberto Eco - we had to memorize this name for Reach for the Top in High School. Something about Roses that I forget now, but I remember his name still.

Also, I can't write poems. In fact, I can't really write anything creative. My evidence for this are my photograph titles, e.g., Tulips XII.