Sylvia Plath

'Do you know what a poem is, Esther?'
'No, what?' I said.
'A piece of dust.' And he looked so proud of having thought of this that I just stared ...
... a whole year later ... I finally thought of an answer to that remark ...
'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.'
   And of course Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn't sleep.'
from The Bell Jar (1963)
Faber and Faber, 1966, p. 58