Poetic Obituaries: It is sometimes remarked, as if to slight

the late Mrs. [Valerie] Eliot, that TSE never wrote anything of the highest quality after he met her. That is probably true, though she didn't cause it. (He was 68 when they married, 38 years older than his secretary, the former Miss Fletcher. They had almost eight years of marital happiness together, before his death in 1965.) There was very little seriously consequential work for many years before they married. Anyway, romantic poets do their best work young. (Do I feel an argument brewing?)

from The Guardian: Valerie Eliot remembered

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