Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. (T.S. Eliot, 1922 – found via Ludologist)
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Norman Hanscombe
It’s pleasing to return after a long absence, Jill, to find you’re doing so well in our northern antipodes. I’ve never come across this quote of Eliot; but I do wonder what he’d suggest were its implications for Shakespeare, whose borrowing habits were very different from those described in Eliot’s final sentence?
Could the effects of our electronic age be a factor in [unlike your other topics] no one having responded to this one? Best wishes.
JoseAngel
For “poet”, read “post”!
scribblingwoman
Riffing/mashing/stealing: a manifesto…
Several days ago Jill Walker posted a passage from T.S. Eliot’s essay on Philip Massinger (1922): Immature poets imitate; mature……
William Patrick Wend » Eliot
[…] Via Jill Walker via Jesper Juul (I am so excited to find a blog of yet another person whose writing I love!) I bring you a wonderful quote from Eliot (via this essay): […]