Jerry Friedman wrote: >Department of Bizarrerie: The poet John Logan, in one of the >_Naked Poetry_ anthologies (iirc), said that so many poets die >or go crazy or stop writing poetry around the age of 35 because >in their "body of work" they're symbolically recreating the body >of their parent of the opposite sex, and halfway through their >lives they're halfway done with the body, which means they've >gotten to a part they can't face. > >I suppose part of this may have been true of Sylvia Plath, >anyway. > > > OTOH, Yeats would be remembered as a minor, second rate poet had he died before turning 40; all of his best work post-dates that, & even in his dotage, so to speak, he was still turning out masterworks, "The Circus Animals' Desertion", for example. ken