The only good aphorism is a dead aphorism?

Sunday, cigarette #1
Knee deep in snow, trudging downtown, 1:15pm

I did not expect to enjoy anything written by someone who took time out of his life to write a book called Why Poetry Matters ("From the author of Mobility is So Key and Declaring War on the Sun: The Case Against!"), but this article on aphorisms is pretty cute, although not at all aphoristic. Observe:

Aphorists like all creative writers to some extent, are gifted plagiarists; that is, they feed on language, taking and transforming what went before them, giving fresh life to what was taken. Ideas belong to no one, only specific language does. And so aphorists take a whiff of what's in the air and put a name to what they smell. Thus we read in Ecclesiastes: "A fool's voice is known by a multitude of words." Centuries later, Ezra Pound says: "The less we know, the longer our explanations."

Indeed.

The opening quote from Umberto Eco ("There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism") reminded me of Prof. Deresiewicz the week we wrote aphorisms in Daily Themes: "This is probably the toughest week in the semester, because aphorisms are hard to write on command. Most aphorisms don't work, even the ones that work. You might say that all aphorisms are failed aphorisms. Hmm. Especially that one. That one was terrible." One Marlboro is not enough time to wrap my head around that one.