"Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others"

Antonin Artaud’s assertion that “Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others” provocatively challenges traditional reverence for literary canon and the permanence of art. Rather than advocating mere disrespect, Artaud’s radical prescription exposes a longing for vitality, immediacy, and continual renewal in art. For him, preserving poetry as static objects or sacred relics fossilizes creativity, stalling the ceaseless emergence of new voices and fresh experience.

Artaud’s perspective draws upon his dissatisfaction with representation and fixity in artistic forms. By reading written poetry only once before destroying it, he imagines a relationship with art that is unmediated and ephemeral, like the fleeting presence of performance or spoken word. Each encounter is to be singular and unrepeatable, inviting the reader to invest fully, knowing the experience cannot be returned to or commodified. The demand that dead poets “make way for others” is not a denial of their contribution, but a challenge to idolization, which risks overshadowing the creative energies of the present. In clinging too tightly to the voices of the past, new poets may never be heard or may be forced to mold themselves in the image of their predecessors.

Furthermore, Artaud’s call reflects a broader modernist or even avant-garde impatience with tradition and nostalgia. He witnessed how art institutions often prioritized preservation over innovation, and how canonical works became untouchable monuments rather than living provocations. Impermanence here becomes a virtue, a way to prevent art from ossifying and to maintain a state of perpetual becoming. In this radical vision, poetry is not a museum piece but a catalytic force, vital only so long as it stirs the individual and collective consciousness, after which it must give space for the next urgent expression. Through this lens, destruction is not nihilism, but an act of creative liberation and continuous evolution.