We Can't Tell Our Life

A Successful Poem Says What A Poet Wants To Say, And More, With Particular Finality. The Remarks He Makes About His Poems Are Incidental When The Poem Is Good, Or Embarrassing Or Absurd When It Is Bad And He Is Not Permitted To Say How The Good Poem Is Good, And May Never Know How The Bad Poem Is Bad. It Is Better To Write About Other People's Poetry.

Our Quarrels With The World Are Like Our Quarrels With God: No Matter How Right We Are, We Are Wrong.

Goethe Said That The Worst Thing In Art Is Technical Facility Accompanied By Triteness. Many An Artist, Like God, Has Never Needed To Think Twice About Anything. His Works Are The Mad Scene From Giselle , On Ice Skates: He Weeps, Pulls Out His Hair Holding His Wrists Like Lifar And Tells You What Life Is, All At A Gliding Forty Miles An Hour.

If You've Been Put In Your Place Long Enough You Begin To Act Like The Place.

Modern" Poetry Is, Essentially, An Extension Of Romanticism; It Is What Romantic Poetry Wishes Or Finds It Necessary To Become. It Is The End Product Of Romanticism, All Past And No Future; It Is Impossible To Go Further By Any Extrapolation Of The Process By Which We Have Arrived, And Certainly It Is Impossible To Remain Where We Are Who Could Endure A Century Of Transition ?