Umberto Eco on Teenage Poetry

INTERVIEWER You’ve talked before about trying your hand at poetry in this period. In an essay on writing, you said, “my poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.”

ECO I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

-Taken from an interview for "The Art of Fiction," (Paris Review, Summer '08)