The Writing Of A Poem Is Like

My Feeling Is That Poetry Will Wither On The Vine If You Don't Regularly Come Back To The Simplest Fundamentals Of The Poem: Rhythm, Rhyme, Simple Subjects - Love, Death, War.

Writing For The Page Is Only One Form Of Writing For The Eye. Wherever Solemn Inscriptions Are Put Up In Public Places, There Is A Sense That The Site And The Occasion Demand A Form Of Writing Which Goes Beyond Plain Informative Prose. Each Word Is So Valued That The Letters Forming It Are Seen As Objects Of Solemn Beauty.

Modernism In Other Arts Brought Extreme Difficulty. In Poetry, The Characteristic Difficulty Imported Under The Name Of Modernism Was Obscurity. But Obscurity Could Just As Easily Be A Quality Of Metrical As Of Free Verse.

Windbags Can Be Right. Aphorists Can Be Wrong. It Is A Tough World.

The Voice Is Raised, And That Is Where Poetry Begins. And Even Today, In The Prolonged Aftermath Of Modernism, In Places Where "open Form" Or Free Verse Is The Orthodoxy, You Will Find A Memory Of That Raising Of The Voice In The Term "heightened Speech".