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.

Most People Don't Listen To Classical Music At All, But To Rock-and-roll Or Hillbilly Songs Or Some Album Named Music To Listen To Music By.

Our Universities Should Produce Good Criticism; They Do Not Or, At Best, They Do So Only As Federal Prisons Produce Counterfeit Money: A Few Hardened Prisoners Are More Or Less Surreptitiously Continuing Their Real Vocations.

There Are Some Good Things And Some Fantastic Ones In Auden's Early Attitude; If The Reader Calls It A Muddle I Shall Acquiesce, With The Remark That The Later Position Might Be Considered A More Rarefied Muddle. But Poets Rather Specialize In Muddles And I Have No Doubt Which Of The Muddles Was Better For Auden's Poetry: One Was Fertile And Usable, The Other Decidedly Is Not. Auden Sometimes Seems To Be Saying With Henry Clay, "i Had Rather Be Right Than Poetry"; But I Am Not Sure, Then, That He Is Either.