Philosophy is a bad master for poetry; religion worse; and politics self-serving will never serve the Muse.
Shirley Geok-lin LimThis distraction is what one wants, which is very, very bad for the muse, because the muse hates not being in the line of sight. It's no longer an external conflict, like, oh, I have all these demands and I don't like them. The split is in the self.โThis may explain why, when I was in Santa Barbara before I went to Singapore and then now to Hong Kong, there was a writing moment when I was writing a poem a day. I had never done that before.
Shirley Geok-lin LimIn the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim