Status Updates From A Preface to Paradise Lost

“The matter inside the poet *wants* the Form: in submitting to the Form it becomes really original… The attempt to be oneself often brings out only the more conscious and superficial parts of a man’s mind; working to produce a given kind of poem which will present a given theme as justly, delightfully, and lucidly as possible, he is more likely to bring out all that was really in him”