Arguments with Myself

I think it was Yeats who said that arguments with yourself create poetry. [JM GOOGLES YEATS, ARGUMENT, RHETORIC AND COMES BACK]. "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry." The arguments with myself I have maintained have not necessarily produced much good poetry, but they have produced a lot of critical writing about poetry. People who do not have arguments with themselves are rather dull people. That's why if you disagree with me you are likely to be agreeing with another part of me, or taking my side against myself. (I go to a restaurant by myself and ask for separate checks, or drive by my house to see if I am home. Well, my car is not in the driveway, so I must not be.)

Yet at other times one of me has won the argument already. Certain questions are no longer up for debate. They are no longer poetic questions, but rhetorical ones.