Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between Hour and hour, word and wor...
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
The detective story, as created by Poe, is something as specialised and as intellectual as a chess problem, whereas the best English detective fiction has relied less on the beauty of the mathematical...
Before a Cat will condescendTo treat you as a trusted friend,Some little token of esteemIs needed, like a dish of cream;And you might now and then supplySome caviare, or Strassburg Pie,Some potted gro...
I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the metier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which...
So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, o...
The world turns and the world changes,But one thing does not change.In all of my years, one thing does not change,However you disguise it, this thing does not change:The perpetual struggle of Good and...
So I find words I never thought to speak
The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.
Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance
I am moved by fancies that are curledAround these images, and cling:The notion of some infinitely gentleInfinitely suffering thing.Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;The worlds revolve like a...
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he liv...
Let us go then, you and I,When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table.Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreatsOf restless nights...
They constantly try to escapeFrom the darkness outside and withinBy dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.But the man that is will shadowThe man that pretends to be.
At the still point, there the dance is.
The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you mus...