"Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo"
About this Quote
Marquis lands the joke with a botanist's delicacy and a newspaperman's brutality: poetry is a rose petal, the public sphere is the Grand Canyon, and the poet is the sort of optimist who expects physics to applaud. The image is funny because it refuses the usual heroic story poets tell about themselves. No grand struggle against philistines, no martyrdom for beauty - just a gentle, almost pathetic gesture swallowed by scale.
The specific intent is twofold. First, it needles the romantic fantasy that publication automatically equals impact. A "volume of verse" sounds dignified, even permanent; Marquis punctures that dignity by making the act absurdly mismatched to its environment. Second, it flatters the reader's sophistication: if you laugh, you're in on the modern suspicion that art's audience is thin and attention is a brutal economy.
The subtext is less anti-poetry than anti-pretension. A rose petal isn't worthless; it's simply the wrong tool for the job if what you want is an echo. Marquis implies that the poet's real desire isn't just expression but response - the confirmation that someone heard, that meaning bounced back. The canyon metaphor turns silence into a natural law, not a moral failure, which makes the cynicism sharper.
Context matters: Marquis worked in the early 20th-century media churn, when mass newspapers, advertising, and popular entertainment professionalized attention. Against that backdrop, poetry looks like a boutique product trying to compete with louder machines. The line endures because it captures an old anxiety in a modern key: the fear that beauty can be made, offered, and still disappear without a sound.
The specific intent is twofold. First, it needles the romantic fantasy that publication automatically equals impact. A "volume of verse" sounds dignified, even permanent; Marquis punctures that dignity by making the act absurdly mismatched to its environment. Second, it flatters the reader's sophistication: if you laugh, you're in on the modern suspicion that art's audience is thin and attention is a brutal economy.
The subtext is less anti-poetry than anti-pretension. A rose petal isn't worthless; it's simply the wrong tool for the job if what you want is an echo. Marquis implies that the poet's real desire isn't just expression but response - the confirmation that someone heard, that meaning bounced back. The canyon metaphor turns silence into a natural law, not a moral failure, which makes the cynicism sharper.
Context matters: Marquis worked in the early 20th-century media churn, when mass newspapers, advertising, and popular entertainment professionalized attention. Against that backdrop, poetry looks like a boutique product trying to compete with louder machines. The line endures because it captures an old anxiety in a modern key: the fear that beauty can be made, offered, and still disappear without a sound.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Quote attributed to Don Marquis; cited on Wikiquote (Don Marquis page). Original publication not clearly identified. |
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