"A poet can endure anything. Which amounts to saying that a human being can endure anything. But that's not true: there are obviously limits to what a human being can endure. Really endure. A poet, on the other hand, can endure anything. We grew up with this conviction. The opening assertion is true, but that way lie ruin, madness, and death."--Robert Bolaño (1953-2003, photo at left, New Directions Publishing Corporation), opening paragraph of the story "Enrique Martín," in Last Evenings on Earth, translated by Chris Andrews (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2006).
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