Ash On An Old Man's Sleeve /

The Ordinary Man's Experience Is Chaotic, Irregular, Fragmentary. [he] Falls In Love Or Reads Spinoza, And These Two Experiences Have Nothing To Do With Each Other, Or With The Noise Of The Typewriter, Or The Smell Of Cooking; In The Mind Of The Poet These Experiences Are Always Forming New Wholes

Poetry Is Not A Turning Loose Of Emotion, But An Escape From Emotion; It Is Not The Expression Of Personality, But An Escape From Personality. But, Of Course, Only Those Who Have Personality And Emotions Know What It Means To Want To Escape From These Things.

The Progress Of An Artist Is A Continual Self-sacrifice, A Continual Extinction Of Personality.

For Most Of Us, There Is Only The Unattended Moment, The Moment In And Out Of Time, The Distraction Fit, Lost In A Shaft Of Sunlight, The Wild Thyme Unseen, Or The Winter Lightning Or The Waterfall, Or Music Heard So Deeply That It Is Not Heard At All, But You Are The Music While The Music Lasts

And Voices Singing Out Of Empty Cisterns And Exhausted Wells.