We Read Many Books, Because We Cannot

The Last Thing One Discovers In Composing A Work Is What To Put First.

The Winter Evening Settles Down With Smell Of Steaks In Passageways. Six O'clock. The Burnt-out Ends Of Smoky Days. And Now A Gusty Shower Wraps The Grimy Scraps Of Withered Leaves About Your Feet And Newspapers From Vacant Lots; The Showers Beat On Broken Blinds And Chimney-pots, And At The Corner Of The Street A Lonely Cab-horse Steams And Stamps. And Then The Lighting Of The Lamps.

What A Poem Means Is As Much What It Means To Others As What It Means To The Author; And Indeed, In The Course Of Time A Poet May Become Merely Reader In Respect To His Own Works, Forgetting His Original Meaning.

The Business Of The Poet Is Not To Find New Emotions, But To Use The Ordinary Ones And, In Working Them Up Into Poetry, To Express Feelings Which Are Not In Actual Emotions At All.

Genuine Blasphemy, Genuine In Spirit And Not Purely Verbal, Is The Product Of Partial Belief, And Is As Impossible To The Complete Atheist As To The Perfect Christian.