Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.

Philip Larkin
About This Quote

Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off. The popular saying goes that why should we care about what other people think about our poetry? Why should we be concerned with what they think of us as writers? The truth is that we should be concerned because their words can influence our sense of self worth or our ideas on how to improve as writers. One does not need to be a famous poet to have an audience, but one does need to know their audience and be able to effectively communicate with them, and this is where poetry comes in.

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More Quotes By Philip Larkin
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  3. I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely...
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