I Don't See That A Single Line

For Poets Today Or In Any Age, The Choice Is Not Between Freedom On The One Hand And Abstruse French Forms On The Other. The Choice Is Between The Nullity And Vanity Of Our First Efforts, And The Developing Of A Sense Of Idiom, Form, Structure, Metre, Rhythm, Line - All The Fundamental Characteristics Of This Verbal Art.

My Sonnet Asserts That The Sonnet Still Lives. My Epic, Should Such Fortune Befall Me, Asserts That The Heroic Narrative Is Not Lost - That It Is Born Again.

Generally Speaking, Rhyme Is The Marker For The End Of A Line. The First Rhyme-word Is Like A Challenge Thrown Down, Which The Poem Itself Has To Respond To.

When We Study Shakespeare On The Page, For Academic Purposes, We May Require All Kinds Of Help. Generally, We Read Him In Modern Spelling And With Modern Punctuation, And With Notes. But Any Poetry That Is Performed - From Song Lyric To Tragic Speech - Must Make Its Point, As It Were, Without Reference Back.

Those Who Actually Set Out To See The Fall Of A City Or Those Who Choose To Go To A Front Line, Are Obviously Asking Themselves To What Extent They Are Cowards. But The Tests They Set Themselves - There Is A Dead Body, Can You Bear To Look At It? - Are Nothing In Comparison With The Tests That Are Sprung On Them. It Is Not The Obvious Tests That Matter (do You Go To Pieces In A Mortar Attack?) But The Unexpected Ones (here Is A Man On The Run, Seeking Your Help - Can You Face Him Honestly?).