7.27.2010

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The rhyming of rhymes is a powerful form of self-medication. All these poets, when they begin to feel that they are descending into one of their personal canyons of despair, use rhyme to help themselves tightrope over it. Rhyming is the avoidance of mental pain by addicting yourself to what will happen next. It's like chain-smoking -you light one line with the glowing ember of the last."

(The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker)(An amusing book about a poet unable to write the forward to his anthology, whose riffs of self-pity contain solid advice and apercus)

1 comment:

  1. Lighting one cigarette off the next! That's great, and, I'd guess from the little rhyme work I've done, true.

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