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From "The Singing School of the Humanities," by Frederick Turner, American Arts Quarterly 24, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 17 —

Gifted young [artists] achieve adulthood with a precious nest-egg of early numinous and mysterious experience. That experience derives from the delights of childhood discovery of the world, the magic of our early attempts at explanation of it and the nightmares of our first forays into the realm of change, sex, and death. As T. S. Eliot suggested in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," that egg contains a yolk that is designed to feed the bird of the imagination until it is ready to fly, but it is not meant to be a permanent diet. The bird must feed itself, and it must learn how to do so and learn how to sing. The nourishment that artists need is, essentially the monuments of tradition.... Without that further nourishment the gifted artist will produce an original and successful first book or show, follow it by a second elaborating of the ideas of the first and then plagiarize himself with greater or lesser skill of concealment for the rest of his life. The bird must learn to forage for itself.

first published Oct 16, 2007