Quote of the Day

Poems are works in a very strange way: between one and another there is not that relationship of filiation that exists so palpably with tools. Technique and creation, tool and poem are different realities. The technique is method and its worth is in proportion to its effectiveness, that is, to the extent that it is a method susceptible to repeated application: its value lasts until a new method is devised. The technique is repetition that improves or deteriorates; it is heritage and change: the gun replaces the bow. The Aeneid does not replace the Odyssey. Each poem is a unique object, created by a “technique” that dies at the very moment of creation.

—Octavio Paz, The Bow and the Lyre