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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Talking of Writing

Talking of Writing

For twenty years I have been a poet, and not yet seen good reason to repent. I am strongly aware that my own works are those of a little boy playing marbles in the dust outside the tin wall of the Girls’ Lavatory. But grubby little boys may sometime grow up and have each a vision of the world which they neglect at their peril. Every now and then an advertiser of liniments for sprainedpage 293 consciences does in fact read a story or poem and understand it. Then he objects. Poems and stories are not pills, manifestos, or blueprints of Utopia, but ways of coming at life, as private as a kiss and as public as a morgue, and as different as the writers that make them. Poverty, even tiredness and lack of leisure are not the greatest check to good writing, rather a too complete surrender to the local climate of opinion.

1956 (137)