Advertising versus Lyric Poetry

“There are only so many peo­ple capa­ble of putting togeth­er words that stir and move and sing. When it became pos­si­ble to earn a very good liv­ing in adver­tis­ing by exer­cis­ing this capa­bil­i­ty, lyric poet­ry was left to untal­ent­ed screw­balls who had to shriek for atten­tion and com­pete by eccen­tric­i­ty.”

Mitchell Courte­nay in Fred­er­ick Pohl & C.M. Korn­bluth’s The Space Mer­chants