good enough to be neglected

    An obscure chap called George Every has just died
    in his 94th year. I know nothing about him except through
    an obituary which appears in today's London Times.

    He seems to have been held in the highest esteem by
    a number of heavyweights, among them - T.S. Eliot.

    The obituarist thought it worthwhile to include a letter
    of Eliot's to Every around the mid-30s when, as an editor
    for Faber, he first encountered the man's work.
    
    '... There is a chance you are a poet & that is saying
    a good deal. I mean that if you are a poet, you are
    too good a poet to be dealt with from a publisher's
    point of view. It is not a question of a volume to be
    ready by 1937, etc. It is a question of your being good
    enough to be discouraged; I mean of your being encouraged
    to go on writing & not care about publication, or about
    anything that may happen to what you write, while you are
    alive. I don't believe that a good poet can be killed
    by not being published or by being published & badly
    reviewed. I think that if you are a good poet you will
    know when you have finally done something that hasn't
    been done before & it won't matter a fig to you whether
    you are poublished in the Criterion, or in a book. If you are
    a good poet you are good enough to be neglected ...'

    A word of consolation to all you as-yet-unpublished.

    (And a reminder from that other one, from Ezra, to:
    'Make it new'.)

    Scottie B.

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Received on Fri Sep 12 07:16:11 2003