To continue to grow, a writer has to dare to be an idiot, to be reckless, to be wrong. We forgive the foolishness of the young - we even find it charming - more than we do that of the old. Poets are supposed to die young, suicide is best, or if it's too late for that, they're expected to abandon the stage before they drool on the page in public, before they become an embarrassment to themselves and their readers. If they have the gall to continue, we insist that they act and speak with gravitas. Epithets like the following attach themselves to the should-be-admired, grey-haired purveyor of words: wise, sententious, gracious, dean-like, dignified in comport and speech. Fuck that, I say.
- Lorna Crozier, from her essay "Running/Writing For Your Life" in the Summer 2021 issue of The New Quarterly.
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