As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mugs game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. – T. S. Eliot
In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave. – John James Ingalls
