Saturday, February 13, 2010

A Damagingly Prescient Clerihew

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH

"I wouldn't take any bets
On Eliot's Four Quartets,"*
Said critic, Martin Seymour-Smith,
"There'll not be much call for a Fifth."



*Or, to quote Martin Seymour-Smith's famous dismissal directly, from page 286 of The New Guide to Modern Literature, "For all the many ambitious exegeses that have been made of them, it is safe to predict they will not survive as major poetry."

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