Interestingly, what I'm finding suggests that the original statement is not about the conclusions of poems but about knowing when they're finished. This is given as the full sentence from which the phrase is taken:
"The correction of prose, because it has no fixed laws, is endless, a poem comes right with a click like a closing box."
And while I can't find the whole letter quoted anywhere, more than one source says that it's from a letter of Yeats to his friend Dorothy Wellesley (sp? I can't just go back with my browser or I'll lose this post. Rats. I've forgotten the date too--maybe 1935?)
But this too is the result googling. Maybe we'll get where we need to be by piling up google results.
|