What is failure? Who gets to define “those who have failed”? If...

What is failure? Who gets to define “those who have failed”?
If there is one arena in which notions of failure and success sit uneasily, it is within art. How do we judge the success of a work of literature? By the extent of its readership? By its critical reception? By the author’s personal judgement? And at what stage are we ready to carry out these assessments? On publication? Or a decade after? A century?

- on art, activism and fathers: my review of poet Martin Espada’s latest book, which is dedicated to his father, published at sx salon http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/reviews/his-fathers-disciple