05-13-2011, 11:13 AM
I like anecdotes, but mostly I agree with you. Discovering Larkin was a vile racist after the posthumous release of his diaries wasn't important to me, and I was stunned that people were turned off by his poetry as a result. Who you are as a person isn’t relevant to who you are as an artist. At least in my opinion.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe