Habits Are Happiness Of A Sort...

How Can We Expect Novelists To Be Moral, When Their Trade Forces Them To Treat Every End They Meet As No More Than An Imperfect Means To A Novel?

Habits Are Happiness Of A Sort...

The Southern Past, The Southern Present, The Southern Future, Concentrated Into Gertrude's Voice, Became One Of Red Clay Pine-barrens, Of Chain-gang Camps, Of Housewives Dressed In Flour Sacks Who Stare All Day Dully Down Into Dirty Sinks.

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.

The Usual Bad Poem In Somebody's Collected Works Is A Learned, Mannered, Valued Habit, A Habit A Little More Careful Than, And Little Emptier Than, Brushing One's Teeth.