Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 1. On His Poetry and Poetic Method
On the Publication of His Poetry

The Question of Publication

I do not attach much importance to the publication or non-publication of my poetry and never have done. Most of it (the published part) appeared five, ten, fifteen or even thirty or more years after they were written. The few recently published in magazines (not all of them new, e.g. the sonnets) owed their fate to Nolini’s eagerness and not to my initiative. But the vast bulk of what I have written (long poems mostly) lies on shelf and in drawer, most of it for more than a decade, awaiting either dissolution or an interminable revision or total recasting which at the present rate may well retain them there a decade or two more. But that is my own idiosyncrasy — it cannot be a rule or example for others. However, for those that are “circulated” Nolini and Doraiswami have found a trick which — I hope — will prevent any farther push for premature publication in the future — i.e. printing them as they come and letting them pile up for private circulation hereafter.

8 January 1935