This next one's a lonely planet guide to the major transit points of recorded time. Having spent forty years doing basic research for the kama sutra which he never did write up, the Buddha - according to the Sanskrit texts - took a google of years to reach the lip of illumination ; a thousand years on and a thousand miles east the Chinese, who could tell the time (unlike the Indians) cut that down and then (and zen) the Japanese said that if they tried 8 out of 10 folk could achieve illumination in a lifetime. By the time it hit California all you had to do was buy the LP. But which LP ? It was then that I came across Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's version of Horace. Now what it says, if you can trust the translations (which I don't advise) is 'my poetry will last as long as there's somebody there to read it'. And it goes on, as though by way of explanation,

And to the people long shall I be dear
because kind feelings did my lyre extoll
invoking freedom in an age of fear
and mercy for the broken soul

Did he say those things in order to be remembered ? If so, he'll be remembered as a monument to bad faith. Not that it matters, since, as was becoming clear in Pushkin's time, mankind was older than anyone could tell, and, as Nabokov would soon learn, no poem, indeed no culture, had a snowball's chance in hell of outlasting the half-life of our more impressive garbage. This all makes the close of the poem,

… make it thy rule
to be unstirred by praise as by abuse

a maxim the feet from under which had been cawed in that, if a reputation is what you are after, and it won't last anyway, then you'd be as well to cut the snash and dedicate your next book to Helen Vendor. This of course is all because the poetry shelves are filling up with poetry none of which is mine. Which brings me back to that LP or product on the shelf. How do you select ? I mean even before you get to the choice between those who write to keep alive and vice versa, how should you know which one of the Herberts to scrub and which of the Patersons to read ?
I thought before I read or wrote any more I'd develop this textual virus that deletes and recycles all bad verse. The thought that it might chew up most of mine didn't bother me. Indeed, I used my own creations as the tissue culture. It was going to be shareware, no royalties, to be sure of proper propagation.
Several years into my research I was brought to a sudden stop by two realisations :
(1) it already exists
(2) it takes a thousand years to work

I can teach you nothing
but I don't promise I will.