If You've Been Put In Your Place

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.

We Died Like Aunts Of Pets Or Foreigners.

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

Our Universities Should Produce Good Criticism; They Do Not Or, At Best, They Do So Only As Federal Prisons Produce Counterfeit Money: A Few Hardened Prisoners Are More Or Less Surreptitiously Continuing Their Real Vocations.

More And More People Think Of The Critic As An Indispensable Middle Man Between Writer And Reader, And Would No More Read A Book Alone, If They Could Help It, Than Have A Baby Alone.