A review by proseinpurple
A Letter to a Young Poet by Virginia Woolf
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
4.0
“Never think yourself singular, never think your own case much harder than other people's.”
“But as it is of the utmost importance that readers should be amused, writers acquiesce.”
“...but once you believe in it, once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader, or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.”
“To penetrate that room is my desire,
The extreme attic of the mind, that lies
Just beyond the last bend in the corridor.
Writing I do it. Phrases, poems are keys.
Loving's another way (but not so sure).
A fire's in there, I think, there's truth at last
Deep in a lumber chest. Sometimes I'm near,
But draughts puff out the matches, and I'm lost.”
“I move lips for tasting, I move hands for touching,
But never am nearer than touching,”
“In other words the poet is much less interested in what we have in common than in what he has apart.”
“The poet is trying honestly and exactly, to describe a world that has perhaps no existence except for one particular person at one particular moment. He strains to describe; we strain to see; he flickers his torch; we catch a flying gleam.”
“-and for my part I do not believe in poets dying; Keats, Shelley, Byron, are alive here in this room in you and you and you."
Short read with lasting impact. Lovely advice by Mrs. Woolf.
“But as it is of the utmost importance that readers should be amused, writers acquiesce.”
“...but once you believe in it, once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader, or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.”
“To penetrate that room is my desire,
The extreme attic of the mind, that lies
Just beyond the last bend in the corridor.
Writing I do it. Phrases, poems are keys.
Loving's another way (but not so sure).
A fire's in there, I think, there's truth at last
Deep in a lumber chest. Sometimes I'm near,
But draughts puff out the matches, and I'm lost.”
“I move lips for tasting, I move hands for touching,
But never am nearer than touching,”
“In other words the poet is much less interested in what we have in common than in what he has apart.”
“The poet is trying honestly and exactly, to describe a world that has perhaps no existence except for one particular person at one particular moment. He strains to describe; we strain to see; he flickers his torch; we catch a flying gleam.”
“-and for my part I do not believe in poets dying; Keats, Shelley, Byron, are alive here in this room in you and you and you."
Short read with lasting impact. Lovely advice by Mrs. Woolf.