To Want To Be What One Can

Novels Are Routinely Denigrated When Characters Are Not Found To Be Likable. Is Raskolnikov Likable? Is King Lear? The Plethora Of Such Naive Readers Testifies To A Failure Of Imagination - The Capacity To See Into Unfamiliar Lives, Motives, Feelings - And This Failure Must, At Least In Part, Be The Failure Of The Teaching Of Literature In The Schools.

One Reason Writers Write Is Out Of Revenge.

Paradise Is Only For Those Who Have Already Been There.

Awe Consumes Any Brand That Ignites It.

... Woman Is Frequently Praised As The More "creative" Sex. She Does Not Need To Make Poems, It Is Argued; She Has No Drive To Make Poems, Because She Is Privileged To Make Babies. A Pregnancy Is As Fulfilling As, Say, Yeats' Sailing To Byzantium.... To Call A Child A Poem May Be A Pretty Metaphor, But It Is A Slur On The Labor Of Art.