Thursday, June 3, 2010

Daily Dose

(Pictured: "donkey library," in Haiti.)
From On Not Winning the Nobel Prize: The Nobel Lecture, by Doris Lessing

IN ORDER

"In order to write, in order to make literature, there must be a close connection with libraries, books, with the Tradition."

2 comments:

  1. I would like to see this incorporated into a sort of "pledge" to be signed by all participants in any writing workshop, especially poetry. They would be pledging to make that connection. I think I've mentioned to you that the many poetry workshops I used to attend were mostly full of people who admitted they rarely read poetry, thus establishing that what they were really interested in was "self-expression", the great art killer.

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  2. I still find that terrifying. It's like someone who never listens to or studies music deciding to become an opera star!

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