Flann O'Brien makes the case for banning poetry

Today I visited Heyford Books in Northampton, which maintains a good general secondhand stock and sells most volumes for £2.

One of the books I came away with was The Best of Myles, an anthology of the writings of Flann O'Brien.

If you're puzzled by the title... Flann O'Brien's real name was Brian O'Nolan. As he was a pillar of the Irish civil service as well as a satirical columnist and novelist, he generally wrote under a pen name, and Myles na Gopaleen.

Here he making the case for banning poetry:

Having considered the matter in – of course – all its aspects, I have decided that there is no excuse for poetry. Poetry gives no adequate return in money, is expensive to print by reason of the wasted space occasioned by its form, and nearly always promulgates illusory concepts of life. 

But a better case for the banning of all poetry is the simple fact that most of it is bad. Nobody is going to manufacture a thousand tons of jam in the expectation that five tons may be eatable.

Furthermore poetry has the effect on the negligible handful who read it of stimulating them to write poetry themselves. One poem, if widely disseminated, will breed perhaps a thousand inferior copies. 

The same objection cannot be made in the case of painting or sculpture, because these occupations afford employment for artisans who produce the materials.

I think Flann O'Brien and I are going to get on very well.