Saturday, September 20, 2014

Stellification, for the few

Elaine has written a terrific post about determining musical and artistic value. What she says reminds me of the last lines of John Ashbery’s poem “Syringa”:


[From Houseboat Days (New York: Penguin, 1977).]

Stellification is for the few, and for other people to decide, later. Or as T. S. Eliot said in East Coker (1943), “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

comments: 2

Elaine Fine said...

. . . And who knew that "Stella by Starlight" would become a standard after its first appearance in "The Uninvited."

Michael Leddy said...

That’s right.

I thought I had written a post about The Uninvited. Oh well. That’s a link to the Criterion Collection’s page about it.