What Three Things Can Never Be Done?

American Poetry Has Been Part Of A Culture In Conflict....we Are A People Tending Toward Democracy At The Level Of Hope; At Another Level, The Economy Of The Nation, The Empire Of Business Within The Republic, Both Include In Their Basic Premise The Idea Of Perpetual Warfare

Dogma And Shrinking From The External World Are At One Limit Of The Range Of Belief. At The Other Are Science And Poetry And, Indeed, Reality.

In Time Of Crisis, We Summon Up Our Strength. Then, If We Are Lucky, We Are Able To Call Every Resource, Every Forgotten Image That Can Leap To Our Quickening, Every Memory That Can Make Us Know Our Power. And This Luck Is More Than It Seems To Be: It Depends On The Long Preparation Of The Self To Be Used.

I Speak To You. You Speak To Me. Is That Fragile?

The 'idea' For The Poem, Which May Come As An Image Thrown Against Memory, As A Sound Of Words That Sets Off A Traveling Of Sound And Meaning, As A Curve Of Emotion (a Form) Plotted By Certain Crises Of Events Or Image Or Sound, Or As A Title Which Evokes A Sense Of Inner Relations; This Is The First 'surfacing' Of The Poem. Then A Period Of Stillness May Follow.