Of Course There Is Enough To Stir

When Reviewers Take The Trouble To Compliment A Writer On Her Style, It Is Usually Because She Has Made It Easy For Them To Slide From One Sentence To Another Like An Otter Down A Slope.

The Speeding Reader Guts A Book The Way The Skillful Clean Fish. The Gills Are Gone, The Tail, The Scales, The Fins; Then The Fillet Slides Away Swifly As Though Fed To A Seal.

But The Body Fails Us And The Mirror Knows, And We No Longer Insist That The Gray Hush Be Carried Off Its Surface By The Cloth, For We Have Run To Fat, And Wrinkles Encircle The Eyes And Notch The Neck Where The Skin Wattles, And The Flesh Of The Arms Hangs Loose Like An Overlarge Sleeve, Veins Thicken Like Ropes And Empurple The Body As Though They Had Been Drawn There By A Pen, Freckles Darken, Liver Spots Appear, The Hairah, The Hair Is Exhausted And Gray And Lusterless, In Weary Rolls Like Cornered Lint.

So If Hunger Provokes Wailing And Wailing Brings The Breast; If The Breast Permits Sucking And Milk Suggests Its Swallow; If Swallowing Issues In Sleep And Stomachy Comfort, Then Need, Ache, Message, Object, Act, And Satisfaction Are Soon Associated Like Charms On A Chain; Shortly Our Wants Begin To Envision The Things Which Well Reduce Them, And The Organism Is Finally Said To Wish.

In General, I Would Think That At Present Prose Writers Are Much In Advance Of The Poets. In The Old Days, I Read More Poetry Than Prose, But Now It Is In Prose Where You Find Things Being Put Together Well, Where There Is Great Ambition, And Equal Talent. Poets Have Gotten So Careless, It Is A Disgrace. You Can’t Pick Up A Page. All The Words Slide Off.