The Real War Poets Are Always War

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.

The Usual Criticism Of A Novel About An Artist Is That, No Matter How Real He Is As A Man, He Is Not Real To Us As An Artist, Since We Have To Take On Trust The Works Of Art He Produces.

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.

One Whitman Is Miracle Enough, And When He Comes Again It Will Be The End Of The World.

If We Were In The Habit Of Reading Poets Their Obscurity Would Not Matter; And, Once We Are Out Of The Habit, Their Clarity Does Not Help.