Diana, the following quotation from Eliot deals with one
of the voices of poetry:

   In most kinds of writing, it is necessary to think, for
   what audience are you writing?  In poetry, it is often
   necessary to forget the audience altogether. There are
   moments, certainly, when one needs encouragement to go
   on at all; when we need an audience of one or two
   people who believe in us, arid in whom we believe: but
   real poetry comes primarily from a pressure inside us,
   and not from a call from an audience.


On Poetry
An Address by T.S. Eliot on the Occasion of the
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Concord Academy
Concord, Massachusetts
June 3, 1947