Age Could Not Wither Nor Custom Stale

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.

The Southern Past, The Southern Present, The Southern Future, Concentrated Into Gertrude's Voice, Became One Of Red Clay Pine-barrens, Of Chain-gang Camps, Of Housewives Dressed In Flour Sacks Who Stare All Day Dully Down Into Dirty Sinks.

If Sometimes We Are Bogged Down In Lines Full Of "corybulous", "hypogeum", "plangent", "irrefragably", "glozening", "tellurian", "conclamant", Sometimes We Are Caught Up In The Soaring Rapture Of Something Unprecedented, Absolutely Individual.

If We Were In The Habit Of Reading Poets Their Obscurity Would Not Matter; And, Once We Are Out Of The Habit, Their Clarity Does Not Help.

Whether They Write Poems Or Don't Write Poems, Poets Are Best.