Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Guidance in Writing Poetry

Originality [1]

It is a good poem; its rhythm and expression are sufficiently chaste and strong to convey an effect of restrained power and give a poetic body to the thought — and the thought itself is on a high level and has the emotion and truth of what comes from the higher mind. Judged independently, the one defect is that the style has not the note of perfect originality, the intensity of discovery in it; I find too much echo of my own poetry in Ahana. But this derivativeness is inevitable when one is learning how to write — it is only when you have got a certain mastery of the medium that you can express in your own way.

6 December 1932