Whether They Write Poems Or Don't Write

Poetry Is A Bad Medium For Philosophy. Everything In The Philosophical Poem Has To Satisfy Irreconcilable Requirements: For Instance, The Last Demand That We Should Make Of Philosophy (that It Be Interesting) Is The First We Make Of A Poem; The Philosophical Poet Has An Elevated And Methodical, But Forlorn And Absurd Air As He Works Away At His Flying Tank, His Sewing-machine That Also Plays The Piano.

Some Of Mr. Gregory's Poems Have Merely Appeared In The New Yorker ; Others Are New Yorker Poems: The Inclusive Topicality, The Informed And Casual Smartness, The Flat Fashionable Irony, Meaningless Because It Proceeds From A Frame Of Reference Whose Amorphous Superiority Is The Most Definite Thing About It They Are The Trademark Not Simply Of A Magazine But Of A Class.

Modern" Poetry Is, Essentially, An Extension Of Romanticism; It Is What Romantic Poetry Wishes Or Finds It Necessary To Become. It Is The End Product Of Romanticism, All Past And No Future; It Is Impossible To Go Further By Any Extrapolation Of The Process By Which We Have Arrived, And Certainly It Is Impossible To Remain Where We Are Who Could Endure A Century Of Transition ?

If You Look At The World With Parted Lips And A Pure Heart, And Will The Good, Won't That Make A True And Beautiful Poem? One's Heart Tells One That It Will; And One's Heart Is Wrong. There Is No Direct Road To Parnassus.

Read At Whim! Read At Whim!