Robert Graves on story-tellers

The Devil’s Advice to Storytellers 

 Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue, 

Keep probability – some say – in view. 

But my advice to story-tellers is: 

Weigh out no gross of probabilities, 

Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of 

Known instances of virtue, crime or love. 

To forge a picture that will pass for true, 

Do conscientiously what liars do – 

Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid 

The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade: 

Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps 

That may shake down into a world perhaps; 

People this world, by chance created so, 

With random persons whom you do not know – 

The teashop sort, or travellers in a train 

Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again; 

Let the erratic course they steer surprise 

Their own and your own and your readers’ eyes; 

Sigh then, or frown, but leave (as in despair) 

Motive and end and moral in the air; 

Nice contradiction between fact and fact 

Will make the whole read human and exact. 

 

                                      —Robert Graves

Favorites:

Collected Poems

The White Goddess

Goodbye to All That

And a bonus quote:

“To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.”