Fiction Is Life With The Dull Bits

This Quality Becomes Important At A Time When Almost Everyone Is A Poet. And As I Said, We Live In An Age Where Almost Everybody Is A Poet, But Scarcely Anyone Can Write A Poem.

Dinner Was Meat - Not Hunks Of Meat, As In Australia, But Pathetic Scraps Of Meat, As In Britain - Which The Girls Upstairs Transformed Into Edible Dishes By Heating It In Secret Ways And Adding Bits Of Stuff To It.

Pound Had Argued - And Eliot Had Helped Him Prove - That A Poem Could Be Sustained By Memorable Moments. Olson Proved That It Could Be Sustained By Unmemorable Ones, Provided That The Texture Of The Accumulated Jottings Avoided The Sound Of Failed Poetry.

The First Language That I Learned Was Italian In Italy In The Early And Middle-'60s And I Had To Do That To Keep Up With The Young Men Who Were Courting My Wife.

Ban Poetry. And Make Sure That Anyone Caught Reading It Is Expelled From School. Then It Will Acquire The Glamour.