“One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet]
is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets
steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into
something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds
his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different
than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something
which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors
remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
-T. S. Eliot
-T. S. Eliot
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