Not Fare Well, But Fare Forward

One Of The Surest Tests Of The Superiority Or Inferiority Of A Poet Is The Way In Which A Poet Borrows. Immature Poets Imitate Mature Poets Steal Bad Poets Deface What They Take And Good Poets Make It Into Something Better Or At Least Something Different. The Good Poet Welds His Theft Into A Whole Of Feeling Which Is Unique Utterly Different Than That From Which It Is Torn The Bad Poet Throws It Into Something Which Has No Cohesion. A Good Poet Will Usually Borrow From Authors Remote In Time Or Alien In Language Or Diverse In Interest.

Our Emotions Are Only “incidents” In The Effort To Keep Day And Night Together.

In The Room The Women Come And Go Talking Of Michelangelo.

As A Rule, With Me An Unfinished [idea] Is A Thing That Might As Well Be Rubbed Out. It's Better, If There's Something Good In It That I Might Make Use Of Elsewhere, To Leave It At The Back Of My Mind Than On Paper In A Drawer. If I Leave It In A Drawer It Remains The Same Thing But If It's In The Memory It Becomes Transformed Into Something Else.

And All Shall Be Well And/ All Manner Of Thing Shall Be Well/ By The Purification Of The Motive/ In The Ground Of Our Beseeching