What there is in me of poesis rests in my fingertips and in my eyes, but because the poem exists in the thing I make, and not in me, it comes to me in the act of discovery. I make votives of one sort and another and celebrate possibilities in gold and bronze and other materials. In the making of things and especially in the making of images, lies an act of conquest which is sufficient exercise of power for a proper man.
I put this passage next to Seamus Heaney's "The Diviner" (and next to various parts of Mary Renault's The King Must Die and The Mask of Apollo) when I think about teaching, about art, about craft, and about ambition. The books I haven't written yet; the stories I tell, have told, will tell.
Ayrton, Michael. The Testament of Daedalus. London: Robin Clark, 1991.
Renault, Mary. The King Must Die. New York: Pocket Books, 1965.
---. The Mask of Apollo. New York: Pantheon, 1966.
