"If I were assigned poems I suppose I'd write more of them but it is entirely voluntary and for the most part ignored in the market sense of the word so the language to me is most intimate, most important, most sublime and most satisfying when it gets done"
About this Quote
Voluntary work always tells on the voice. Lynch frames poetry as the opposite of assignment: not a deliverable, not a talking point, not something calibrated to land in “the market sense of the word.” That phrase does more than sneer at commerce; it sets up a quiet moral hierarchy. The public world he inhabits - schedules, constituencies, measurable outcomes - runs on incentives. Poetry, by contrast, is where incentive disappears, and with it the need to posture.
The intent is almost defensive, but artfully so. “I suppose I’d write more” concedes that productivity often follows external pressure, then immediately refuses that pressure as a standard. He’s arguing that the scarcity is the point: poems gain their authority from being chosen, not commissioned. When he calls language “most intimate” and “most sublime,” he’s not romanticizing poetry so much as reclaiming speech from its utilitarian uses. For a politician, language is routinely instrumental: it persuades, softens, distracts, rallies. Lynch suggests there’s another register where language is not a tool but a place you go when you want to mean what you say.
Subtext: the market ignores what matters, and the self gets deformed when it only speaks for audiences. The line “when it gets done” is the tell - satisfaction arrives not from reception but from completion, from making something honest enough to stand without applause. In a culture where everything is content and every sentence is potentially a brand, he’s staking out a private commons inside the public mouth.
The intent is almost defensive, but artfully so. “I suppose I’d write more” concedes that productivity often follows external pressure, then immediately refuses that pressure as a standard. He’s arguing that the scarcity is the point: poems gain their authority from being chosen, not commissioned. When he calls language “most intimate” and “most sublime,” he’s not romanticizing poetry so much as reclaiming speech from its utilitarian uses. For a politician, language is routinely instrumental: it persuades, softens, distracts, rallies. Lynch suggests there’s another register where language is not a tool but a place you go when you want to mean what you say.
Subtext: the market ignores what matters, and the self gets deformed when it only speaks for audiences. The line “when it gets done” is the tell - satisfaction arrives not from reception but from completion, from making something honest enough to stand without applause. In a culture where everything is content and every sentence is potentially a brand, he’s staking out a private commons inside the public mouth.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|
More Quotes by Thomas
Add to List
