Except From The Americans—but Every Pearl Has

I Simply Don't Want The Poems Mixed Up With My Life Or Opinions Or Picture Or Any Other Regrettable Concomitants. I Look Like A Bear And Live In A Cave; But You Should Worry.

If You've Been Put In Your Place Long Enough You Begin To Act Like The Place.

Most Of The People In A War Never Fight For Even A Minute Though They Bear For Years And Die Forever. They Do Not Fight, But Only Starve, Only Suffer, Only Die: The Sum Of All This Passive Misery Is That Great Activity, War.

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.

Most Poets, Most Good Poets Even, No Longer Have The Heart To Write About What Is Most Terrible In The World Of The Present: The Bombs Waiting Beside The Rockets, The Hundreds Of Millions Staring Into The Temporary Shelter Of Their Television Sets, The Decline Of The West That Seems Less A Decline Than The Fall Preceding An Explosion.