Literary essays

Ah, the amazing Internet! I found online the two literary essays that most influenced my thinking as a graduate student studying literature and becoming a writer myself.

The first is "Tradition and the Individual Talent" by T.S. Eliot:

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

Read the essay.

"...only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." This blew me away the first time I read it!

The second essay is "The Unemployed Magician" by Karl Shapiro:

ONCE IN HIS LIFE, at a time of his own choosing, each
poet is allowed to have an interview with the god of
letters. He is a real god, I think, and maybe much
more than that. He can answer all questions about po-
etry, especially the ones poets and philosophers have
never been able to settle; I suspect that he can answer
every other question as well. The poet, unfortunately,
cannot return with the answers; as he shakes hands
and says good-bye to the god, the visitor is automati-
cally brainwashed. All recollection of the god's wisdom
is obliterated and the poet returns home to write--
criticism.

(There is a charge to read this entire essay online: information.)

I responded to the notion that, first, the poet/artist was like a magician, with a bag of tricks (craft), and the key was not to let the audience see how the trick was done; and, second, that the poet/artist was unemployed, that in fact the culture didn't know quite what to do with him or how to put him to work.

Both essays came to mind as I was cruising this morning.