all poets are failed poets

"As a young editor, Robert Giroux once asked T. S. Eliot whether all editors were not failed poets. "All poets are failed poets," said Eliot. And he was Eliot. To have your work published is nice, of course, but in my experience it takes more than a story or poem to make a nobody feel like a somebody. The world is full of published writers who suspect they're amateur clowns."


lorin stein (Washington, DC, 1973), excerpt from 'The Murakami Landscape; Your Inner Clown', published in Ask The Paris Review, the Paris Review Daily blog, April 1, 2011


Further reading:

Lorin Stein, the Paris Review’s New Party Boy (The New York Times)

349 Minutes With Lorin Stein (New York Magazine)

The Q&A: Lorin Stein, editor (The Economist's More Intelligent Life)