ars poetica

Little Gidding
V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.

— T. S. Eliot, from The Complete Poems and Plays 1909 – 1950 (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1952)

My attention was drawn to this passage as an ars poetica by Eleanor Cook in her book A Reader’s Guide to Wallace Stevens (Princeton, 2007)

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