Age Could Not Wither Nor Custom Stale

If My Tone Is Mocking, The Tone Of Someone Accustomed To Helplessness, This Is Natural: The Poet Is A Condemned Man For Whom The State Will Not Even Buy Breakfast And As Someone Said, "if You're Going To Hang Me, You Mustn't Expect To Be Able To Intimidate Me Into Sparing Your Feelings During The Execution."

Some Of Mr. Gregory's Poems Have Merely Appeared In The New Yorker ; Others Are New Yorker Poems: The Inclusive Topicality, The Informed And Casual Smartness, The Flat Fashionable Irony, Meaningless Because It Proceeds From A Frame Of Reference Whose Amorphous Superiority Is The Most Definite Thing About It They Are The Trademark Not Simply Of A Magazine But Of A Class.

Human Life Without Some Form Of Poetry Is Not Human Life But Animal Existence.

A Poet Is A Man Who Manages, In A Lifetime Of Standing Out In Thunderstorms, To Be Struck By Lightning Five Or Six Times.

If Poetry Were Nothing But Texture, [dylan] Thomas Would Be As Good As Any Poet Alive. The What Of His Poems Is Hardly Essential To Their Success, And The Best And Most Brilliantly Written Pieces Usually Say Less Than The Worst.