Whether They Write Poems Or Don't Write

Some Of Mr. Gregory's Poems Have Merely Appeared In The New Yorker ; Others Are New Yorker Poems: The Inclusive Topicality, The Informed And Casual Smartness, The Flat Fashionable Irony, Meaningless Because It Proceeds From A Frame Of Reference Whose Amorphous Superiority Is The Most Definite Thing About It They Are The Trademark Not Simply Of A Magazine But Of A Class.

An Intelligent Man Said That The World Felt Napoleon As A Weight, And That When He Died It Would Give A Great Oof Of Relief. This Is Just As True Of Byron, Or Of Such Byrons Of Their Days As Kipling And Hemingway: After A Generation Or Two The World Is Tired Of Being Their Pedestal, Shakes Them Of With An Oof, And Then - Hoisting Onto Its Back A New World-figure - Feels The Penetrating Satisfaction Of Having Made A Mistake All Its Own.

One Whitman Is Miracle Enough, And When He Comes Again It Will Be The End Of The World.

When You Begin To Read A Poem You Are Entering A Foreign Country Whose Laws And Language And Life Are A Kind Of Translation Of Your Own; But To Accept It Because Its Stews Taste Exactly Like Your Old Mother's Hash, Or To Reject It Because The Owl-headed Goddess Of Wisdom In Its Temple Is Fatter Than The Statue Of Liberty, Is An Equal Mark Of That Want Of Imagination, That Inaccessibility To Experience, Of Which Each Of Us Who Dies A Natural Death Will Die.

I Decided That Europeans And Americans Are Like Men And Women: They Understand Each Other Worse, And It Matters Less, Than Either Of Them Suppose.