Wheresoe’er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new;
Endless labour all along,
Endless labour to be wrong;
Phrase that Time has flung away,
Uncouth words in disarray:
Trickt in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode and elegy and sonnet.
Wheresoe’er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new;
Endless labour all along,
Endless labour to be wrong;
Phrase that Time has flung away,
Uncouth words in disarray:
Trickt in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode and elegy and sonnet.
“I had a wonderful conference yesterday with a graduate student who told me, among other things, that writers write for emotional reasons, and I said No, writers do not write for emotional reasons — they write because they want to make something. I asked her if she knew the Stephen Sondheim musical with the number about making a hat — “a hat, a hat, I made a hat where there never was a hat.” That’s so moving to me I choke up when I tell you about it, and I said that’s what writing is about, that’s what all art is about: you’ve made a hat where there never was a hat! That’s why people write. I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s how I try to engage students to get out of this one-on-one, tit-for-tat realism: make a thing that never was.”
Stanley Elkin