Elisa New: belief

Transcript context

…What do you think of the notion of poets who do harm? T. S. Eliot, for instance — he claimed Milton, whom he thought was a great poet, but did more harm to 18th century poetry than either Dryden or Pope. Are there poets today — great though they may be — who are in a sense doing harm to poetry? And how should we think about that? Are there poets doing harm to poetry? I think T. S. Eliot was too fastidious about such matters. Poetry survived John Milton just fine. I would rather ask the question, [laughs] “Ask not what poetry can do for you, ask what you can do for poetry.” Or ask what poetry can do for the world. Ask why we need poetry. William Carlos Williams, who did not like T. S. Eliot, reminded us that — what did he say? People die every day for want of what? Poetry, what poetry can offer, by which he meant a way of thinking about the wrenching complexities and compromises that we all make every day. Was Samuel Johnson right that no person ever wished Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to be longer than it was?…

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