The Clock Talked Loud. I Threw It

It's Hard For Me To Talk About The Terrible Things That Have Happened In My Lifetime Because They Didn't Need To Be.

I Could Not Live By Literature If Only To Begin With, Because Of The Slow Maturing Of My Work And Its Special Character.

It Is Distraction, Not Meditation, That Becomes Habitual; Interruption, Not Continuity; Spasmodic, Not Constant Toil.

And When Is There Time To Remember, To Sift, To Weigh, To Estimate, To Total?

Literary History And The Present Are Dark With Silences . . . I Have Had Special Need To Learn All I Could Of This Over The Years, Myself So Nearly Remaining Mute And Having To Let Writing Die Over And Over Again In Me. These Are Not Natural Silences--what Keats Called Agonie Ennuyeuse (the Tedious Agony)--that Necessary Time For Renewal, Lying Fallow, Gestation, In The Natural Cycle Of Creation. The Silences I Speak Of Here Are Unnatural: The Unnatural Thwarting Of What Struggles To Come Into Being, But Cannot.