Asking myself why I do not write inevitably leads to another, much more interesting question: why did I ever write? After all, the normal thing is to read. I have two preferred answers. The first, that my poetry was––without my knowledge––an attempt to create an identity for myself; having created and assumed this identity, I was no longer concerned to throw myself into every poem I set about writing….The other, that it was all a mistake: I believed that I wanted to be a poet, when really I wanted to be a poem. And to a degree, an unfortunate degree, I have achieved this; like any reasonably well-crafted poem, I now lack inner freedom, I am all need and internal submission to that tormented tyrant, that insomniac, omniscient and ubiquitous Big Brother: Me.

[Jaime Gil de Biedma]