I find myself constantly wandering in bookshops looking for new poems and poets, often without any success. “Why can’t I find more poems like Telemachus?”
Then a friend’s comparison between Dostoevsky and Nabokov struck me: The latter looks down on the former when it comes to achievement in literature, because he’s like the best artisan in the world at crafting beautiful figurines. But the former’s works are really akin to the Parthenon, with weathered marbles and cracks, leaving us only watching in awe. What I’m looking for in poetry is monuments of epic proportions, not fruit salads I can eat as a side course and digest in twenty minutes. Alas, poems in shops are more often than not birthday gifts, and you don’t usually find monuments in gift shops.