John Kendrick Bangs

“ The habit some of our poets have acquired of giving way to their inspirations all over the club-house should be stopped, and I know of no better way to accomplish this desirable end than by the adoption of Homer’s suggestion. ”

“ The poets need to be concentrated somewhere where they will not be a nuisance to other people, and where other people will not be a nuisance to them. Homer ought to have a place to compose in where the vingt-et-un players will not interrupt his frenzies, and, on the other hand, the vingt-et-un and other players should be protected from the wooers of the muse. ”

“ An Authors’ Club, where none but authors are admitted, is a good thing. The members learn there that there are other authors than themselves. Poets’ Clubs are a good thing; they bring poets into contact with each other, and they learn what a bore it is to have to listen to a poet reading his own poem. ”

“ If they choose to write poems on the paper instead of boring people to death with letters, as most of us do, that’s their own affair."
"Well, they’re very wasteful," said Demosthenes.
"We can meet that easily enough," observed Cassius. "Furnish each writing-table with a slate. I should think they’d be pleased with that. ”

“ I told him he ought to do his rubáiyátting at home, and he made a scene, to avoid which I hastened with my guest over to the billiard-room; and there, stretched at full length on the pool-table, was Robert Burns trying to write a sonnet on the cloth with chalk in less time than Villon could turn out another, with two lines start, on the billiard-table with the same writing materials. ”