Unless I'm Wrong I But Obey The

At Bottom The World Isn't A Joke. We Only Joke About It To Avoid An Issue With Someone, To Let Someone Know That We Know He's There With His Questions; To Disarm Him By Seeming To Have Heard And Done Justice To His Side Of The Standing Argument.

It Is Absurd To Think That The Only Way To Tell If A Poem Is Lasting Is To Wait And See If It Lasts. The Right Reader Of A Good Poem Can Tell The Moment It Strikes Him That He Has Taken An Immortal Wound-that He Will Never Get Over It.

One Of The Hardest Things In Life To Accept Is A Called Third Strike.

Poetry Begins In Trivial Metaphors, Pretty Metaphors, "grace" Metaphors, And Goes On To The Profoundest Thinking That We Have. Poetry Provides The One Permissible Way Of Saying One Thing And Meaning Another. People Say, "why Don’t You Say What You Mean?" We Never Do That, Do We, Being All Of Us Too Much Poets. We Like To Talk In Parables And In Hints And In Indirections - Whether From Diffidence Or Some Other Instinct.

We Dance Round In A Ring And Suppose, But The Secret Sits In The Middle And Knows.