Who is important for you?
I was talking about a poem with a friend the other day, and he asked me if the writer was an important poet for me. I knew immediately what was meant – was this someone whose work was influential for me, who formed part of my private canon, or who meant something to me in particular for some nonliterary reason. The answer was no. This was a poem I liked very much, by a poet whose work I sometimes enjoyed and sometimes didn’t, and that I almost never sought out to read, except for that particular poem. (And it’s the fact that this sounds like faint praise, rather than a true love of that one poem, that means that I’m not naming poet or poem here, to avoid accidental bruising.)
But the question has stuck with me: Are they important for you?
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