Know any good poets named "Litt"?

February 11, 2009 12:41 PM

Need help identifying this quote.

Alright, I'm stumped, time for the Big Guns. I'm attempting to identify a quotation, and the only clue I have is that it is from someone named "Litt", who was (is?) possibly a poet.

The tiger roaring like a fire, the fire roaring like a tiger, are metaphors which both fire and tiger are made clear.

posted by Squid Voltaire to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

Well, you could e-mail this woman or this guy since they used the quote here.
I know that's probably where you found it, an I'm always pleasantly surprised at how helpful people can be if you ask them.
posted by Floydd at 12:54 PM on February 11, 2009

Best answer: I don't actually know the answer, but is it possibly Toby Litt?
posted by crapples at 12:57 PM on February 11, 2009

I would hazard a guess that the one-name reference points instead to the German philosopher.

It's an interesting quote (oddly one I feel I've heard before, but without a single hit on Google that's unlikely). There isn't anything in the bibliography for the paper [pdf], so your best bet probably is just contacting the authors.
posted by dhartung at 1:19 PM on February 11, 2009

Response by poster: Got it! The poet is Toby Litt, and the line is from his poem For Borges, published in the May 1989 edition of Oxford Magazine. I found this out by simply writing to him. His email address was on his website, which also contains a long list of diverse questions, some of which have been answered and some of which had not.

I suggested that he try Metafilter for some of the unanswered ones. (:
posted by Squid Voltaire at 8:16 AM on February 17, 2009