Art Is Long, And Critics Are The

The Climate Of Our Culture Is Changing. Under These New Rains, New Suns, Small Things Grow Great, And What Was Great Grows Small; Whole Species Disappear And Are Replaced.

When You Begin To Read A Poem You Are Entering A Foreign Country Whose Laws And Language And Life Are A Kind Of Translation Of Your Own; But To Accept It Because Its Stews Taste Exactly Like Your Old Mother's Hash, Or To Reject It Because The Owl-headed Goddess Of Wisdom In Its Temple Is Fatter Than The Statue Of Liberty, Is An Equal Mark Of That Want Of Imagination, That Inaccessibility To Experience, Of Which Each Of Us Who Dies A Natural Death Will Die.

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

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."

Carl Becker Has Defined A Professor As A Man Who Thinks Otherwise; A Scholar Is A Man Who Otherwise Thinks.