Most readers, particularly those who make little distinction between the past and present in seeking their sustenance, will be able to think of people they would choose for their ‘literary family’ across millennia.   I love the image of imaginative mitochondria passing down the ages.

‘Your chosen literary family can extend over thousands of years and beyond the borders of empires, poet connecting to poet, sharing the mitochondria of imagination.’

See also the bestellar review of this luminous book, complete with a mosaic of quotations and metaphors.

Source: Molly Peacock, The Paper Garden (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 315