Poetry Will Absorb And Transmute,

I Compelled Myself All Through To Write An Exercise In Verse, In A Different Form, Every Day Of The Year. I Turned Out My Page Every Day, Of Some Sort - I Mean I Didn't Give A Damn About The Meaning, I Just Wanted To Master The Form - All The Way From Free Verse, Walt Whitman, To The Most Elaborate Of Villanelles And Ballad Forms. Very Good Training. I've Always Told Everybody Who Has Ever Come To Me That I Thought That Was The First Thing To Do.

Life Is The Thing--the Song Of Life-- The Eager Plow, The Thirsty Knife!

The Truth--a Hideous Spectacle!

I Think We've Come To A Kind Of Splinter Period In Poetry. These Tiny Little Bright Fragments Of Observation - And Not Produced Under Sufficient Pressure - Some Of It's Very Skillful, But I Don't Think There's Anywhere A Discernible Major Poet In The Process Of Emerging; Or If He Is, I Ain't Seen Him.

No God Save Self, That Is The Way To Live.