Life & Wisdom Quote by James Laughlin

Laughlin is describing inspiration as a mechanical event, not a mystical visitation: something “just goes click.” That verb matters. It suggests a circuit closing, a lock turning, an editor’s drawer sliding shut with satisfying finality. For a poet who also spent his life as a publisher (New Directions’ tastemaker-in-chief), the “click” reads like a private quality-control signal: the moment language stops being mere draft and becomes inevitable.

The name-drop of Gertrude Stein sharpens the claim. Stein was famous for turning repetition and estrangement into a kind of auditory truth test; you didn’t “understand” so much as you recognized. “It rings the bell” borrows that logic of recognition and frames it as a bodily response. Laughlin isn’t arguing that greatness is objective; he’s admitting that the first judge is the nervous system. The bell is both approval and alarm: pay attention, something real is happening.

Subtext: this is a defense of intuition in an era that often asked poets to justify themselves with manifestos. Modernism prized difficulty, but Laughlin is pointing to a simpler, almost childlike certainty: “I feel, this is great.” That bluntness can sound naive until you remember his context. Laughlin’s career was built on betting early on the right voices. The quote quietly elevates the editor-poet’s superpower: the capacity to hear a future classic before consensus arrives, to trust the click even when the room doesn’t.