I Really Don't Know Enough About The

I Compelled Myself All Through To Write An Exercise In Verse, In A Different Form, Every Day Of The Year. I Turned Out My Page Every Day, Of Some Sort - I Mean I Didn't Give A Damn About The Meaning, I Just Wanted To Master The Form - All The Way From Free Verse, Walt Whitman, To The Most Elaborate Of Villanelles And Ballad Forms. Very Good Training. I've Always Told Everybody Who Has Ever Come To Me That I Thought That Was The First Thing To Do.

I Do Believe In This Evolution Of Consciousness As The Only Thing Which We Can Embark On, Or In Fact, Willy-nilly, Are Embarked On; And Along With That Will Go The Spiritual Discoveries And, I Feel, The Inexhaustible Wonder That One Feels, That Opens More And More The More You Know. It's Simply That This Increasing Knowledge Constantly Enlarges Your Kingdom And The Capacity For Admiring And Loving The Universe.

Ghostly Above Us In Lamplight The Towers Gleam ... And After A While They Will Fall To Dust And Rain; Or Else We Will Tear Them Down With Impatient Hands; And Hew Rock Out Of The Earth, And Build Them Again.

I Think That What's Happening Today, With All The Young Poets Rushing From One College To Another, Lecturing At The Drop Of A Hat And So On, Is Not Too Good; I Think It Might Have A Bad Effect On A Great Many Of The Young Poets. They - To Quote Mark Twain - "swap Juices" A Little Too Much, So That They Are In Danger Of Losing Their Own Identity And Don't Give Themselves Time Enough In Which To Work Out What's Really Of Importance To Them - They're Too Busy.

As Poetry Is The Highest Speech Of Man, It Can Not Only Accept And Contain, But In The End Express Best Everything In The World, Or In Himself, That He Discovers. It Will Absorb And Transmute, As It Always Has Done, And Glorify, All That We Can Know. This Has Always Been, And Always Will Be, Poetry's Office.