A Person Is A Process, One That

The Usual Bad Poem In Somebody's Collected Works Is A Learned, Mannered, Valued Habit, A Habit A Little More Careful Than, And Little Emptier Than, Brushing One's Teeth.

The Southern Past, The Southern Present, The Southern Future, Concentrated Into Gertrude's Voice, Became One Of Red Clay Pine-barrens, Of Chain-gang Camps, Of Housewives Dressed In Flour Sacks Who Stare All Day Dully Down Into Dirty Sinks.

Most Poets, Most Good Poets Even, No Longer Have The Heart To Write About What Is Most Terrible In The World Of The Present: The Bombs Waiting Beside The Rockets, The Hundreds Of Millions Staring Into The Temporary Shelter Of Their Television Sets, The Decline Of The West That Seems Less A Decline Than The Fall Preceding An Explosion.

Art Is Long, And Critics Are The Insects Of A Day.

Goethe Said, "the Author Whom A Lexicon Can Keep Up With Is Worth Nothing"; Somerset Maugham Says That The Finest Compliment He Ever Received Was A Letter In Which One Of His Readers Said: "i Read Your Novel Without Having To Look Up A Single Word In The Dictionary." These Writers, Plainly, Lived In Different Worlds.