“When one is writing a poem, one may not be thinking about one’s moral duties. One just has something inside that one wants to get out, and the only way to get it out and at the same time find out what it is one wants to get out, is to find the words for it. If you are a poet you will come to know when you have found the words, and when you haven’t.” T.S. Eliot

Source: Collected Prose Vol 4, quoted in TLS January 24 2025 p.5