News at Eleven: Poetry is a vocation: it possesses you.

So the choices are either: write poetry or go mad, or: write poetry and go mad. The attrition rate among poets is high, and even given the vocation there is no guarantee that any of what you write will prove to be good or durable. As TS Eliot said, you may have messed up your life for nothing.

from The Guardian: Vocation, vocation, vocation

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